Hi,
In the modern world, the internet has led to the digitalization of everything, including cash, contracts, artworks, and even gold. Now, with the touch of your smartphone, you can own gold through apps, ETFs, and even through the use of blockchain. While all this sounds rather cool and innovative, when it comes to security and peace of mind, nothing beats the experience of holding gold.
There’s a huge disparity between the ability to own gold on a screen and the ability to hold the gold in your hands.
Physical gold exists in the real world. There’s no need for a password, an application, and a server in order to exist. Hacking, freezing, and deletion are simply impossibilities. In possessing the bar and the coin, all rights and ownership are in your hands alone.
What is owning Digital Gold?
“Digital gold” always has some basis on which it relies. That basis could be the company running the platform, the legal system in effect, the quality and accessibility of your internet, and the soundness of the financial systems. Your “gold” could become unavailable in an instant if either of these sources goes wrong. When a worst-case scenario like an attack, economic shutdown, and problems with banks arise, you could lose your “gold” when you need access to it the most.
There’s also the matter of ownership. With digital gold or gold ETFs, you simply don’t own actual, tangible pieces that are sitting in some vault somewhere. What you own could be an IOU, an entry on an accounting sheet, or a piece of an investment. In either case, with actual gold, there’s no room for misunderstanding. Either you possess the gold, and then you don’t possess all 100 percent.
The other reason why people would rather have faith in physical gold has to do with the aspect of privacy. Buying physical bullion can be conducted secretly. There are no long traces, login credentials, and internet footprints, just like in the use of apps and other platforms.
The psychology behind it
And then, of course, there’s the psychological aspect. There’s just something comforting about being able to see and touch your money. The sensation of knowing your gold bar in the safe, your gold coin in your hand, is one you can’t put a value on. There’s just an air of permanence there that simply isn’t present when you’re looking at numbers on a screen.
Final Thoughts
We witness this change on a daily basis at AU Bullion. Increasingly, investors are now deserting the world of pure cryptocurrency and coming into our store. And they want to hold this in their hands. An asset that isn’t determined by an algorithm, by the government, by institutions. An asset that has withstood the test of time, an asset that has lasted for four thousand years. “Digital assets represent the future, and gold, on the other hand, represents the now and the always.”
