Nick Szabo  🔑

That may be so but this doesn't change the basic fundamentals of WHY gold over everything else. The WHY is due to natural law, physics, chemistry, crustal abundance, geology, whatever you want to call it. The measurement of volatility = the measurement of relative decay.

And I would argue that there is no written proof that gold ever needed "time" to emerge as a monetary commodity. What we see is a simultaneous ascension of commodity and money. Therefore, your postulate that "gold undoubtedly underwent in early decades" is speculation Nick.

:) That's the problem though isn't it? Don't you find it a bit perplexing that we have to rely on theoretical postulates ie: "Deep History" by Lord-Smail or Graeber, to believe in this "ascension" theory of commodities? You sort of have to believe in the whole "Standard Model"...

1/2 Would it not be equally logical to postulate that: Gold has always been the premier commodity money since the at least the dawn of written history? And that the ratios between geology and free markets have reconciled since? Gold/Silver Gold/Copper etc. Bitcoin is something..

There was already over a millennium of experience with gold before it appeared in written records, so what those records say about it say is irrelevant to the uncertainty surrounding its use during its first few decades, which common sense tells us would have been quite high.

Uncertainty was so high, indeed, that shell-using cultures almost always ignored gold dust & nuggets in their environment (e.g. indigenous cultures of California). Was highly improbable event when Danubians started supplementing shell beads with gold beads, and then kept at it.

I think evidence of some cultures ignoring gold doesn't detract from the mystery of why it appears MOST cultures through varying epochs/geographies overwhelmingly VALUED it, based on its natural characteristics. The key here is overwhelming majority.