# Yet another digresion about precious metals as currency

**URL:** <https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/yet-another-digresion-about-precious-metals-as-currency/23446>\
**Category:** The Drawing Board\
**Created:** [April 28, 2020, 1:52pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/yet-another-digresion-about-precious-metals-as-currency/23446 "2020-04-28T13:52:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 34

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**Author:** ![kevin.granade](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/kevin.granade/32/1316_2.png) [@kevin.granade](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/kevin.granade)\
**Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 9:23pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/yet-another-digresion-about-precious-metals-as-currency/23446/34 "2020-04-28T21:23:34Z")

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See previous discussions:

> [@What are we using for currency (apart from cash cards)](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/what-are-we-using-for-currency-apart-from-cash-cards/12070):
>
> AFAIK the lore says the government made all money be turned on cash cards,so how i am bartering with npcs before i even got a cash card? bottle lids?

> [@Cigarettes as a de-facto currency?](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/cigarettes-as-a-de-facto-currency/404/7):
>
> Narcotics could be the various currencies, since few people actually use them for their intended purposes (from what I know) and they’re difficult to manufacture (so few people could actually make their own drugs and it’d be impossible to counterfeit). From Spoony’s Counter Monkey stories, he mentioned two post-apocalyptic stories; the currency in one was water, and the other was bullets.

> [@Yet another random currency discussion](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/yet-another-random-currency-discussion/15170):
>
> Actually guys in Metro 2033 used anything as a currency, if you haven’t read the books. That includes any valuable things like ammo (not only pre-war 5.45), vodka and other rare and hard-to-make things. Which is quite intuitive, as you’d want to trade your goods for something that has a value everywhere. Which, again, in the case of dollars… well, dollars are just paper. That’s why people don’t use them anymore after the world ends.

> [@Counterfeit money facility (please do not delete :P)](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/counterfeit-money-facility-please-do-not-delete-p/7332/11):
>
> Outside of a specific faction backing one, there will not be a universal currency, there will just be barter with various items having more or less value to different individuals. The only thing “old-world” money will be good for is either starting fires or buying things from robots. For example if you’re trading with a hermit that’s hiding in a cabin in the middle of the woods, they have no interest in pre-apocalyptic or faction currency, they have no intention of going to a town where they c…

> [@Money Money Money and machines](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/money-money-money-and-machines/2573/4):
>
> hah, I like the idea of some kind of kiosk where the easiest way to get at the contents (without risking their destruction at least) is to hook up some kind of power supply and then feed it cash. Also yea, robots would be a possibility. Smash a window, the eyebots demand you pay a fine, if you do they leave you alone. Hilarious. As was pointed out though, survivors aren’t going to value money (except for use in the above scenario), so it won’t generally be useful as a currency. We have a ru…

tl;dr, no, gold and precious metals aren’t going to hold any significant value, there’s essentially zero demand and very high supply.

The thing you’re missing with respect to precious metals is they have never been pure currency, they’ve always been rare and durable trade goods with high intrinsic value due to workability and ornamentation. Their use as a currency is built on top of this durable value, it’s not independent of it.

The problem is, for that intrinsic value to be realized, you need societal stability. In other words, there need to be enough people wealthy enough to value the precious values as ornamentation, if not enough of these people exist, they have no value. For most of human history, society has been “stable enough” for this to hold, which is why it seems obvious to treat this as a universal truth. In the cataclysm though, what demand is present is _trivially_ realized by looting homes or jewelry stores, leading to essentially zero unsatisfied demand.

To some extent even in the absence of immediate demand, you could anticipate future demand and assign value based on that, but again in the dda scenario, there’s a supply glut as well as bottomed out demand, and even worse, no expectation of that demand increasing in the immediate or even medium term future. There is potential that _some_ people would be in denial about the scenario, but that isn’t going to be enough to drive overall demand meaningfully.

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