How can precious metals like silver become real money in a crash? Well., Silver and gold were used as currencies by nearly every empire and civilization. Only up until the last 100 years did silver and gold stop being used and switched to fiat legal tender. There’s a finite amount of silver and gold whereas fiat a government can print at will. We can look at many countries throughout history that printed at will, Zimbabwe, Weimar Republic, Chile, and countless others. Since there’s a finite amount of gold and silver the usage would create costs of goods and services to lower and reduce inflation because in theory less money would reduce the purchasing power of the people in said country. On, the bright side this would prevent major bubbles from happening.

Since the popularization of crypto and blockchain technology new age folks believe Bitcoin could serve as currency. Bitcoin has rough 19 million bitcoins total in the world and 1.8 million and change left to be mined. Bitcoin does have a finite number of coins, but what creates the value? The technology? Easy to use QR code scanning? This is the mystery still left to be solved, also would Bitcoin issue more coins. There’s a lot of questions still shrouding the crypto world as it’s still relatively new in comparison to gold and silver. Let’s also remember would people be willing to pay 0.0001 BTC every time they made a purchase at the store. (example)

In the age of information and technology there’s a lot of possibilities and we will see how things play out over the next decade or so. We like silver and gold as a currency because it’s always been used up until the last 100 years and is proven to work.