Which could also be said about Bitcoin. I'm sure someone out there would find some kind of academic interest in looking at Bitcoins or enjoy collecting them. There might be almost no value in Bitcoin, but it would probably never erode completely.

Your scenario here is plot armor.

Sure, if we pretend that gold stops having ANY use outside of being pretty, then when it stops being considered pretty it's value will go to 0.

But the fact is, gold has a myriad of uses besides being pretty and those uses give it an inherent value.

And when you go to sell it, others' use of it is what sets the sell value, not your personal use of it. It doesn't matter that I'm not personally using it for conductivity if the person I'm selling it to is (or someone downstream of them is).

IOW, stop posting fiction.

I fail to see the purpose of this 'pilot amor'. There is no reason why gold would stop being useful beyond being pretty. This fiction you've come up with doesn't even make any sense and certainly has no relevance to the discussion.

However, that doesn't mean there is always a user available. When we saw the price of oil go negative there were still just as many uses for oil as there ever was, but for various reasons there weren't buyers in that moment. Gold is not immune to the same.

In case you are still confused, let me be clear: Price and value are not the same thing.

> IOW, stop posting fiction.

Sage advice.

I used the phrase 'inherent value' to describe what you're referring to as 'use value'. But of course someone decided they had to argue against it by arguing that the trade value between countries went negative at one point (which isn't all that surprising but has nothing to do with the original point).

arguably 'use value' is a better phrase, but given the surrounding explanations, the poster engaged in a clear strawman.