Peter Schiff

It would probably be better if it was made out of gold, but it's too expensive.

So in a lot of applications, you can substitute copper for gold because it'll work, right?

But in those applications where you can't, like I can't make my watch out of copper, but in the applications where you need to have gold, then...

You buy gold.

And so there's real demand for gold.

That's what gives it its value.

What makes it money are the other characteristics like durability, portability, fungibility.

But its inherent value comes from the fact that it's a precious metal that has all these unique and valuable properties.

The reason the price is high is because it's also scarce.

So gold...

can do a lot of great things, but we don't have a lot of it.

If there was more of it around the earth, the price wouldn't be as high because it'd be more readily available.

So it's very valuable and very scarce.

And so it has a high price, which also lends itself to being money.

But even if you are not a jeweler, and even if you are not making computers or in aerospace or in medicine or any of the places we're called,

When you're buying it, you're buying it because other people use gold, even if you don't.

In prisons, cigarettes become money.

Why are those cigarettes valuable?

They're valuable because smokers want them because they smoke.

Now, you may not smoke.