You have to get things started though. What would be a good estimate of the #of people that actually own gold in their portfolio, considering most people have a 401k or some other retirement plan? 1%? 5%? How do you get the ball rolling on that? Because the vast majority will have to go about life using some other medium of exchange to get things done. Gold isn't going to get there very easily when there's only a few dozen people in town that have any, and it's in a commodities account that may also be part of the collapsing financial infrastructure.

Hold some physical gold, then you aren't reliant on anyone.

Its like keeping a gun, you hope it never gets used but when you need it, you're glad you have it.

And that group will be even smaller than the group holding it as a commodity, meaning there would be practically no one to trade with as the massive majority of the population has to figure out some alternative. I wouldn't be able to take your gold and be confident that someone else would accept it as payment when I needed to buy something, because maybe they don't have any surplus they can gamble on gold and instead of getting something they directly need in exchange.

Whatever the population rallied around as a medium of exchange would have to be accessible, ubiquitous, and hard to duplicate. Gold hits 1 out of 3, because once the financial system collapses no one without gold will be able to use their inflated $1,000,000 bills to buy it directly, leaving only that tiniest minority with actual gold and a vast majority that can't wait for gold to bootstrap itself into a reasonable medium of exchange.

Want to make sure you can retain your wealth & have it back after we rebuild from a financial collapse? Sure, have some gold. But if you want to to have an immediate ability to acquire things during that collapse, gold won't help. If your heat goes out a month after financial institutions collapse, No HVAC engineer is going to fix your boiler for gold unless they already have enough people giving them food and other services for their work that they can risk taking something in return that doesn't have an immediate use.

I'm not saying gold couldn't be a medium of exchange. Obviously it has in the past. I'm saying that current ownership patterns don't make that practical, especially in the short term, say 1-2 years, after a serious financial collapse.

I agree with you, point is, you don't really care what people converge to eventually, you know you'll be welcome to that party once they decide.

Obviously preparing for food and other necessities should have a separate plan..