O Valor do Ouro? A quantidade total disponível é estável

... (na verdade o elemento existente mais estável que se conhece) o que o torna no candidato natural a meio de troca, assim o regime monetário fosse livre. De uma análise tendo como referência 1971 (altura que o dólar era ainda convertível em ouro a 35 USD - obrigação - default - renunciada por Nixon):

"Money Supply and Purchasing Power, By Mike Hewitt and Dr. Krassimir Petrov

6. Conclusion

So, what can we conclude from this whole analysis? The overall conclusion is that gold is a significantly better store of value than paper currencies. While the purchasing power of gold is up four times, the purchasing power of major currencies is down 5-10 times, except for the Swiss Franc and the Japanese Yen, whose depreciation is significantly less. The second column in the table below, Change in Unit Value, shows the exact percentages.

	Supply Fold-Increase	Change in Unit Value (%)
Gold	1.8	310.4
CHF	3.8	-23.7
JPY	15.9	-25.4
USD	16.8	-81.1
GBP	12.6	-88.3

The explanation for gold's ability to hold its purchasing power is obvious from the first column. While the supply of gold has not even doubled for the period, the supply of some currencies has increased 10-20-30 times and more. For example, the supply of Australian dollars increased 33.5 times, while the supply of Canadian Dollars is up 15.4 times. There should be no wonder why they have lost most of their value for the period. If governments print them fast, they will depreciate rapidly - it is as simple as that. Governments can't print gold, so they can't depreciate its value. In the world of money, gold is still the best store of value."