So basically, ever since it became legal to once again own physical gold, people who understood a little bit about economics and inflation (in the 1970s we had stagflation, an even worse condition of a stagnating economy combined with inflation) bought gold as a hedge against the decreasing value of the dollar. Looking back through recent history, you will see that when crisis hits, demand for gold goes up. Only today, we have so many "gold like" instruments traded which are convoluting the actual price of gold so we have no idea what physical gold is really worth anymore. But we will find out soon enough when the gold ETF and ishare holders realize that their paper gold is not really gold and want to trade it in for the real thing.
yeah, so many idiots on the world every ounce of gold has been sold to 6 or 7 different persons because of all this 'paper gold'
if you buy gold, demand it to be delivered in pure gold, not some kind of "look at how stupid I am for buying the most expensive piece of paper saying I have a claim on a piece of gold I never even laid my eyes on" paper.
If increased Bitcoin adoption results in higher Bitcoin prices then why didn't gold prices plummet when we decided to stop using gold as a currency (i.e. gold adoption fell)?
Essentially because we didn't !! We didn't stop considering gold as a monetary asset. People still CONSIDER gold very valuable, and that is why it IS very valuable. At no point in history, gold has lost its monetary value completely. People still consider it as a store of value, and that is what makes it a store of value.
Something is money if enough people think it is money, and for gold, enough people have always considered it as being money. Not money to buy a loaf of bread with (but gold was rarely used for small transactions). But money as store of value.
yes even in history only the rich used gold, and even then they used small pieces and only for big services.
for their daily shopping they used copper and sometimes silver.