Article
Why gold has anchored monetary systems for millennia — its properties, its place in modern portfolios, and what actually moves its price.
Gold (symbol Au, atomic number 79) is the metal humanity has trusted longest. For more than five thousand years it has served as money, ornament, and a refuge in times of uncertainty — a record no other asset can match.
Gold is dense, strikingly malleable, and almost completely resistant to corrosion: it does not rust or tarnish, so a coin pulled from a shipwreck looks much as it did when it was minted. That permanence, combined with genuine scarcity, is the physical basis for its monetary role.
Roughly half of all gold becomes jewellery. The rest is split between investment bars and coins, central-bank reserves, and a small but vital slice of industry — gold's superb conductivity and corrosion resistance make it indispensable in high-reliability electronics.
Gold pays no yield, so it tends to shine when real interest rates fall, when inflation erodes paper currencies, or when investors simply want an asset that no government can print. It is best understood not as a way to get rich, but as insurance for the rest of a portfolio.
This article is general information, not investment advice.
