Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Gold and its Monetary use


Gold has been widely used throughout the world as money, for efficient indirect exchange (versus barter), to store wealth in hoards. For exchange purposes, mints produce standardized gold coins,bars and other units of fixed weight and purity.

As per evidence the first known coins of gold or gold embedded were found in Lydia, Asia minor, around 600 B.C. Europeans re-established the minting of gold coins during the 13th and 14th century. Bills and golds certificates were in circulation as gold standard money in most 19th century industrial economy. After world war 2 gold was replaced by a system of nominally convertible currencies related by fixed exchange rates following the Bretton woods system. Gold standards and direct convertibility of currencies to gold have been abandoned by World governments, led in 1971 by the United States refuse its dollars to redeem its gold. Now in present times Fiat currencies plays all the monetary roles. Central still continue to keep the portion of liquid reserves in Gold in some form. Today Gold mining output is declining. Today the output of Gold mining is declining. Due to sharp increase in growth of economies in 20th century, and increase in foreign exchange, the worlds Gold reserves and there trading market have become a small fraction of all the markets and fixed exchange rate of currencies to gold have been replaced by floating prices for gold and gold future contract.


Prices

As per 2017, gold is valued at around $42 per gram ($1,300 per troy ounce). Like other precious metal gold is always valued at minor weight units such as troy weight and by grams. The propotion of gold in the alloy is measured by karat (K), with 24 carat (24K) being pure gold,and lower karat numbers is proportionally less. The purity of gold bar or coin can also be expressed as a decimal figure ranging from 0 to 1, known as millesimal fineness, such as 0.995 being nearly pure.

The price of Gold is determined through trading in gold and derivatives markets, but the procedure is known as gold fixing in London, originating in September 1919, provides the daily benchmark price to the Industry. The afternoon fixing was introduced in 1968 to provide a price when U.S markets are open.


History

In late 2009, gold markets experienced renewed momentum upwards due to increased demand and weakening U.S dollar. Gold further railed hitting new highs in May 2010 after European debt crisis prompted further purchase of Gold as a safe asset.  

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