31 Fascinating Facts You Didn’t Know About Gold

Despite claims to the contrary from Wall Street financial service hucksters and statist economists the world over, there is no better money than gold. In fact, as JP Morgan famously noted, gold is money; everything else is credit. Of course, Morgan’s claim is true because only gold — and silver — effectively exhibit all of the characteristics that make them the ultimate form of money. That is, they are:

• a medium of exchange
• a unit of account
• durable
• portable
• divisibile
• fungible
• a store of value

And while fiat currencies like the US dollar also have those properties to varying degrees, their Achilles’ heel is their ability to act as an effective store of value. For proof, one only has to compare a $20 bill and a $20 double eagle gold coin that were both issued by the United States in 1913. While the purchasing power of that $20 bill printed in 1913 will still buy $20 worth of goods or services today, the $20 double eagle will fetch approximately $1250.

That difference, doesn’t represent an increase in the purchasing power of gold — rather it represents the loss of purchasing power of the US dollar.

Quite simply, paper currency is no match for gold — and it never will be.

Frankly, how could it? Unlike fiat currency — which is routinely abused by governments because it can be freely printed without any restraints whatsoever — gold will always be precious because its supply is finite; all of the gold that’s meagerly distributed here on planet Earth was created by a higher power, forged within the awesome stellar blast furnaces of deep-space supernovas.

And if you think that is amazing, well … here are 31 more fascinating facts about the yellow metal, compiled for you by my friends at Bullion Vault:

Photo Credit: stock photo; Infographic: BullionVault