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bijowo1676today at 5:09 AM4 repliesview on HN

its because you are measuring stable Gold in volatile fiat which is being printed every day depending on the factors you mentioned (interest rates, expectations of future growth, sentiment etc).

because you are getting paycheck in fiat, you are psychologically programmed to think of fiat as something stable, and Gold as volatile.

while in reality prices expressed in Gold ounces remained fairly stable for example: https://i.redd.it/1b5mfrqkxxef1.jpeg


Replies

temp8830today at 2:01 PM

The only "stability" gold has is an emergent property of an interconnected system of hairless apes somehow making each other believe they need it. Same with fiat, bitcoin, or whatever we come up with tomorrow. None of these things have any real utility outside of an expectation that the peer ape also finds them valuable.

AnimalMuppettoday at 11:57 AM

> its because you are measuring stable Gold in volatile fiat

You're defining gold to be stable, and fiat to be volatile. Well, fiat is volatile, but that doesn't make gold stable.

Gold (measured in dollars) nearly doubled over the last year. Does that mean that the dollar is worth only half what it was a year ago? No, it doesn't. (There's been some inflation, but not nearly 100%.)

Gold is down 10% since January 28th. Does that mean that the dollar is worth 10% more than it was on January 28th? No, it doesn't.

Gold is not as stable as you claim it is.

mememememememotoday at 7:49 AM

Fiat is a shit investment that loses even with interest but it isn't really volatile.

thaumasiotestoday at 5:47 AM

You're wrong; the prices of precious metals have never been stable, which is why bimetallic systems have always had a lot of problems papering over the notionally fixed exchange rate between coins of different metals.

That said, I agree that e.g. gold under a regime where most things for sale are priced in gold is more stable than gold as a novelty investment under a fiat currency regime.

When things are priced in gold, most of the demand for gold comes from the fact that it's useful as currency. All of the phenomena we have now still exist, and they disturb the price, but they're small effects compared to the demand for currency.

In the fiat regime, that source of demand is gone. All of the same random effects still push the price of gold around, but because the price is so much lower (due to much lower demand), the price swings are wilder.