Comment by spwa4

"You can trade gold ... easily"

Only for very large amounts of money. It can't easily be subdivided. Oh and this is illegal in most countries.

But yeah, what people forget is that gold is incredibly dense. Nearly double lead's density. This means 1kg of gold is about the size of a nokia 3360, and worth close to 150,000$. A very large amount of gold doesn't take up much volume at all.

... which also means that people "stealing gold" like in the bond movies is totally unrealistic. If you loaded a pallet of gold bars (12.5 kg a piece, 200 gold bars, about 2.5 tons, 375 million USD) into a standard van, that van would probably just break down. And carrying 10 gold bars, 20 million USD in a backpack? Not happening.

(which frankly Trump is abusing because of course the density of gold means that any facility storing gold, including Fort Knox, is going to "look empty")