In this article, the author will explore why gold is more expensive than other metals.
Humans have been in love with gold since 40,000 BC. From the time of Ancient Egyptian civilization, people have been obsessed with gold.
They not only use gold as currency but gold is also used as jewelry to be buried with corpses.
The ruler of Ancient Egypt, King Tutankhamun when he died was buried along with 3 golden coffins. The interior of King Tutankhamun’s coffin is also made of pure gold which is now worth more than 1 million dollars.
Therefore, we already know that people have always loved gold. In fact, the story of gold is also told in the Quran and the Bible.
To this day, gold is a symbol of wealth. Some are willing to put gold on cars, phones, teeth and even ice cream.
Gold is also a symbol of romance. If they want to get married, people will buy a gold ring instead of a silver ring.
For investors, gold is one of the good long -term investment portfolios. For manufacturers of smartphones or electronic devices, gold is very suitable if used because the metal is the best conductor of heat and electricity.
Gold is also difficult to corrode and rust, unlike other metals.
Another factor why gold is expensive is due to geological aspects. Gold can be found in most places but it is difficult for us to get because to get gold, it has to be mined and the cost of mining is very expensive.
After being mined, the gold needs to be cleaned to look beautiful. Because of that, gold is sold at a high price.
Hard to get gold is not the main factor why gold is expensive. There are metals that are harder to find than gold but still cheaper. An example is a metal known as Ruthenium.
1 kilogram of Ruthenium costs around RM9,000 while gold costs RM55,000 per kilogram. So we know the difficulty of getting the gold is not a factor why the metal is expensive.
It is difficult to know how much more gold is in the belly of the Earth but the World Gold Council in 2019 once told the total gold that has been mined is 190,040 metric tonnes equivalent to 190 million kilograms of gold.
This gold is hard to get but enough to build a tower with gold. Gold becomes expensive because it requires a lot of work when mining but that is not the only reason. As mentioned, gold does not rust and is easy to mold.
Easy to make rings, necklaces and people are easily attracted to see whatever jewelry is made of gold.
Silver is also one of the hardest metals to obtain and has a low melting point but silver fades easily and is not durable.
So this gold is perfect in many ways. Gold stays the same, so if you want to do anything with gold, you don't have to worry because it will stay sparkling for many years.
If you have gold, you have a good asset because its value is stable and the whole world acknowledges the value of gold.
Paper money used to be printed on gold but since 1971, paper money is no longer based on gold but only trust from the government alone.
