Though this treasured metallic has all the time fascinated people, it has the excellence of getting used as precise foreign money. As we wrote final yr within the Summer time, gold shares this attribute with silver, however that’s prior to now. Whereas nobody makes use of gold as foreign money immediately, there’s nonetheless such a factor because the gold normal and central banks take care to very intentionally hoard gold. Consequently, gold is among the most costly metals on the earth, far too treasured for many sensible makes use of. Why?
Writing for Forbes final yr, treasured metals knowledgeable Brandon Aversano famous that gold’s rise in worth shouldn’t be dismissed as a “one-off” and we agree. That is regardless of what has occurred because of the Trump presidency within the US; certainly, gold is rallying as we write this. Final yr, we additionally mentioned the worth of gold and famous that it has not been decrease than that of its supposedly extra ostentatious cousin, platinum, for the reason that 2008 monetary disaster. That disaster itself has been the instructed reason behind gold’s regular rise, as traders sought the comforting assurance of an exceptionally dense uncommon metallic to alleviate their misgivings in regards to the ephemeral treasures of latest monetary markets. Not the densest metallic, thoughts, however simply dense sufficient…
Gold is probably universally seen as beneficial. Even a person reminiscent of Mansa Musa, the legendary however fairly actual Emperor of Mali, positively understood its attraction. Additionally it is straightforward to work – presumably the very first metallic utilized by people, in accordance with the World Gold Council, and enhance, and hypoallergenic in addition. On that notice, right here is the promised tl;dr on gold.
Gold’s atomic quantity is 79 and, for these of you who care about such issues, this means the variety of protons within the component. The identical is true for all supplies cited on this part. Gold is a gaggle 11 component within the periodic desk and is listed, famously, as Au (a reference to its Latin title, Aurum). Inside this group 11 of the chemical components, gold is accompanied by copper, silver and roentgenium. The group is formally named the copper group, though they’re collectively often known as colloquially because the coinage group (for apparent causes, excluding roentgenium).
Apparently, the three metals used as foreign money have been identified since prehistory, since all happen in metallic type, with no metallurgy wanted to extract them. By the use of distinction, roentgenium is an artificial metallic, created within the lab in 1994.
Gold will stick with watchmaking, however value stays a significant situation, and we are going to proceed to look in direction of the share of watches on this treasured metallic as a barometer of how the business is doing.
This story was first seen as a part of the WOW #79 Summer time 2025 Challenge
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