That’s why I put all my savings into real shitty drawings of cartoon apes who look like they smoke weed. China can take your gold but they can never modify the blockchain record that proves I’m a fuckwit.
The article title says china is hoarding the worlds gold, yet the us owns the most by a very large margin...
Not to mention the large amounts of other countries gold that we hold and decide to keep permanently whenever a country makes us upset. We’ve stolen so many countries reserves, after FORCING many of them to store their reserves in the US.
And another thing, it also says China PRODUCES the most gold. Okay so they produce the most and hold what, less than 30% what the US Fed holds? Ridiculous headline and article. Seems as if they've had every opportunity to amass more or equal to the other leaders and are only just now increasing holdings over the past 9 months.
Doesn't the US literally have the vast majority of the world's original gold reserves from the bretton woods agreement before Nixon abolished the gold standard?
possession /= property. During Bretton-woods everyone deposited their gold in the US.
The US own around 8.1k tonnes, EU member states 11.7k, Switzerland another 1000.
Germany has the 2nd largest reserves by country (after the US), 3300 tons, and has been bringing gold physically home, completely emptying Paris' vault, moving 500t from New York to Frankfurt, London stayed about stable.
You now might be asking yourself "how the fuck do they transport 500t gold across the Atlantic" and the answer is: Nobody knows. The Bundesbank isn't saying a thing short of that the gold went to Switzerland to be analysed and re-melted. It's not much volume-wise though, about 9m^3^. My best bet is submarine to Germany's north coast, then an inconspicuous train to Switzerland (it's not like German subs can't operate in shallow water but the Rhine, nope).
From the article:
Its gold reserves are estimated to be 2,113 tonnes as of July—the fifth largest behind the Federal Reserve's 8,133
so... actually the federal reserve is hoarding the world's gold
Now that is obviously different. Obviously.
It's different when white people do it, bro.
When the Federal reserve did it, I bet it wasn't called hoarding.
it was called patriotism! the founding fathers would have wanted us to horde gold.
China is hoarding the world's gold
the fifth largest behind the Federal Reserve's
Guess who they learned from?
China is also the land of dragons. Coincidence?
These were the exact words my trump loving batshit Christian mother in law spews every time she opens her mouth
But I need that gold!
Newsweek
I mean, fuck off
I'd like you to tell me a better way for Xi to swim around in a giant moneybin like Scrooge McDuck.
The world's gold you say? Seems to me that once someone owns it the gold is no longer the property of "the world."
There’s a grizzled old prospector reading this and getting VERY pissed rn
Does gold still have the same value it used to? When it was first used people put value on “oooh, shiny rock, it must be precious”, but now is it really that valuable? It sounds like they’re hoarding it because they think it’s useful as a currency, but if things got bad would other countries care about it?
Gold is agreed upon as a store of value. There's always someone willing to buy it. You're right that its intrinsic value as a material is lower than the actual price but people's belief in gold is the same as their belief in a fiat currency.
The difference is that gold is a physical asset, so that no matter what the rate of inflation or the fluctuation of the market price if you have a tonne of gold you will always have that tonne.
Also it is not administered by a central bank with a political agenda.
Lastly gold is rare and finite. Eventually there will be no more gold to be mined.
I think the fact that it's very chemically stable is likely a factor as well so it can be stored for effectively an infinite amount of time & it won't degrade/react, it'll still be gold.
Oh, look! An asteroid made almost entirely out of gold! T'would be a shame if someone were to mine it...
The price of gold fluctuates though. And it could potentially devalue significantly if a new source is discovered or a new method of mining or extracting it (such as filtering it from seawater) is developed.
So yes, if you have a tonne of gold, you will always have that tonne, but it could lose, say, 20% of its value quickly.
It could indeed and has done so in the past. But the thing about it is that the price always recovers because people believe it will always be valuable. It's the belief that endures and because people will always pay for what they believe to be valuable the value of gold as a currency endures. Also the retail value of gold remains high as the single largest application is jewellery Source page So there's a conflation of the value of the labour that goes into making jewellery, adding value and in some cases the value of the piece will take that gold permanently out of circulation for use as currency e.g. the Mask of Agamemnon
It tends to go up in value during chaotic times as people use it to insulate their savings from the economy when they are expecting regular currencies or economies to crash.
About 10% of gold usage is in technology. This has been steady for many years. Jewelry and Investments can trade off. But yeah, basically its just mostly values because its a rare shiny rock.
If things got bad they'd have the advantage as gold is a much more trustworthy investment than unbacked currencies
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