10 Reasons Why Gold & Silver Are Perfect Money
1. We cannot create them or destroy them. Their total supply on Earth is beyond our control. Things we have control over, tend to be corrupted one way or the other. Gold and silver existed before humanity and exist independently of us.
2. They are scarce relative to other physical things. That is what gives them long lasting, robust value comparing to other assets.
3. Easy to transport and store. Low cost of transportation relative to value.
4. Divisible without losing properties, uniform and universal.
5. They have unique properties which cannot be replicated by anything else. Any alternative to precious metals, within non-monetary roles, is extremely hard to produce, if not impossible.
6. They have functions apart from being money, which supplement their value.
7. They are robust on fragility spectrum: they resist any change, are not internally complex, their nature is to basically remain unchanged.
8. Fungibility.
9. Perfect money should be maximally contrasting to most other things we deal with in order to function as universal metric. Gold and silver and other precious metals, are the only assets which meet all above 8 criteria, while all other assets or things are of different nature. Hence gold and silver can be used as common universal denominator.
10. They are not dependent on external factors to hold their properties.
Any other asset will not meet ALL of the above criteria:
diamonds, land, real estate, works of art, cryptocurrencies, oil, coal, shares of corporations.