[william42]

Hint: the value of USD isn't as an investment. In fact, if the value of USD goes up, that makes it less useful, because the point of having money is to spend it. For example, one of the many reasons of the utter trainwreck of Bitcoin is the fact that more people were holding it as speculation than actually using it to purchase anything.

And it's only 3% in the last year if you aren't trying to compare it to something mid-bubble. The USD is totally going down with respect to tech stocks, guys!

[smokeyj]

Currency markets exist. USD is an asset that can be traded. Holding USD is an investment -- although, not necessarily voluntary. I don't know why you're comparing gold to a baby p2p app with microscopic trade volume. That just seems odd. Because they both experience deflation? In that case, all inflation goes the way of Zimbabwe and even more worthless than gold.

[william42]

Currency markets exist, but most currency trading is a lot more short-term.

Holding USD is rarely an investment. You put money in your checking account(as opposed to a savings account/CD, which is an investment in the bank) because you expect to spend it(you know, what money is for?) soon. Only banks hold large amounts of USD and they almost immediately loan it out.

And you're right, it's unfair to compare gold to Bitcoin. There are people actually using Bitcoin as a currency, whereas gold is almost exclusively exchanged for actual currencies, which are then exchanged for goods and services.

And the failure of the Zim dollar is the reason they recently returned to the gold standard. Oh wait, no, they switched to USD.