Sure, but for all its flaws, gold is a 5000 year old store of wealth with some use in dentistry that doesnt lose most of its value on a regular basis, not a pump and dump scheme whose wealthy foreign speculators need bagholders who havent bored of hearing about its future as global currency to bail out their artificial asset's latest collapse.

"Sure but". Look at the last 100 years of the value of gold. The value has gone all over the place, with many crashes. It isn't as stable as you think.

All it takes is one single "discovery" of a massive cache of gold. That cache is then controlled by the government who's land it is found on. It is one of the most heavily manipulated forms of 'money' on the planet.

It might be good enough for you, but as the person who started this thread, I'm clearly in the camp of less government control over my funds... No, thanks.

Excuse me. When did I say gold was good? I said it wasn't as abominably bad as cryptocurrency, which doesn't need something as unlikely as a discovery of a massive cache of gold to wipe out poor people's meagre fortunes and is the most heavily manipulated form of money on the planet.

It's like concluding that as poor Vietnamese people already smoke (the men generally do...) in lieu of better forms of entertainment, what would really improve their lives is some crystal meth.