Anyone here got a BullionVault account?

[DimPrawn]

So you're swapping bits of paper promising to be worth £££££ with another bit of paper promising to look after a fraction of a block of gold.

What's the difference?

If you don't know the difference, I suggest you not worry about it.

HTH

[PerlOfWisdom]

If you don't know the difference, I suggest you not worry about it.

HTH

Very witty, and it only took you 10 mins to think it up.

[icarus]

So you're swapping bits of paper promising to be worth £££££ with another bit of paper promising to look after a fraction of a block of gold.

What's the difference?

True money has certain properties: it's durable, portable, divisible, homogenous and scarce. Gold has all of these attributes. Fiat paper money ("it's money because we say so") has all the attributes except the last one. They can print more dollars; they can print more pounds; they can print more euros; they can print more yen. But they can't print more gold.

If you believe that your certificate is negotiable for gold (as old fashioned paper money was) then you believe your gold certificate is real money. If you don't trust that you will be able to enforce contracts in the future then you should either hold physical assets yourself or grab your gun and head for Montana.

[TimberWolf]

True money has certain properties: it's durable, portable, divisible, homogenous and scarce.

Those are fiat currencies too IMO. Energy is the base currency which they loosely represent. People, not least economists, have long since not learnt this.