馃攳
Why Gold Is So Expensive | So Expensive - YouTube
Channel: Business Insider
[4]
Gold is the shining embodiment of wealth.
[7]
Not only is it used to
make expensive products,
[10]
but it's also used to add extra bling
[13]
to luxurious items,
[15]
from smartphones,
[17]
to supercars,
[19]
and even beef steaks.
[24]
But other metals that are rarer
than gold are much cheaper.
[28]
So, why is gold so expensive?
[34]
Scientists believe gold arrived on Earth
[36]
after the collision of
two neutron stars in space
[39]
forged gold atoms
together into meteorites,
[42]
which crashed into Earth
about 3.9 billion years ago.
[46]
Over millions of years,
Earth's bubbling hot core
[49]
forced gold nuggets towards the surface.
[52]
Gold flakes have been
found in Paleolithic caves
[54]
estimated to date back
roughly 40,000 years,
[57]
marking the first known instance
[59]
of human contact with the material.
[61]
But what exactly is gold?
[64]
Gold is a relatively rare metal
[66]
with lots of versatility.
[68]
It's highly malleable,
[69]
meaning it can be deformed or changed
[71]
without fracturing the material.
[73]
But what distinguishes it from
other useful precious metals
[76]
is its totally unique
bright-yellow appearance.
[79]
These factors give gold many practical
[82]
and superficial uses on Earth.
[84]
Alistair Hewitt: If you're
a bride, gold is the perfect
[87]
embodiment of love and emotion.
[89]
If you're an investor, gold's an excellent
[91]
portfolio-diversification tool.
[93]
People like to know that they've got
[94]
an element of their wealth
which they can feel.
[97]
Often, it looks beautiful,
[98]
it's got a wonderful design on it,
[100]
and that adds a degree of
emotion to the investment.
[103]
And if you're a manufacturer
or if you're someone
[105]
making smartphones or tablets,
[107]
gold is an element with the symbol Au
[110]
and the atomic number 79,
viewed as the most noble
[113]
of all of the noble metals.
[115]
It's a perfect material
for conducting electricity.
[118]
And it doesn't corrode; it doesn't rust.
[119]
So it's great to have in your product.
[121]
Narrator: Over many
centuries, civilizations
[124]
across the globe became enamored
with the beautiful metal,
[127]
such as the ancient Egyptians.
[129]
Not only did they use it as a currency,
[131]
they also buried themselves in gold,
[133]
believing it to be the flesh of the gods.
[136]
In fact, King Tutankhamun was laid to rest
[138]
in three gold-wrapped coffins,
[140]
the innermost of which
was made from sheets
[142]
of pure, beaten gold, which would now
[144]
be worth over $1 million.
[148]
In 1792, the US Congress
passed the Coinage Act,
[152]
which established a fixed
price of gold to US dollars.
[155]
Over the next century,
gold mining captured
[158]
people's imagination, during
the great US gold rush.
[161]
The first was in 1799, after
12-year-old Conrad Reed
[166]
discovered a huge, 17-pound gold nugget
[168]
on his family's farm in North Carolina.
[172]
Fifty years later, in 1849,
[175]
tens of thousands of prospectors,
[177]
known as the 49ers, raced to San Francisco
[180]
in search of riches, giving name to
[182]
the San Francisco 49ers
football franchise.
[185]
These gold rushes heralded the start
[187]
of modern-day gold mining.
[190]
Despite humans mining gold for millennia,
[192]
the complexity of this
process hasn't changed.
[195]
Hewitt: Mining is just as challenging
[197]
and difficult as it's ever been before.
[200]
What's changed, probably,
is the labor intensity
[203]
in some mines, as people have
increasingly used technology.
[206]
But some of the challenges
aren't necessarily
[208]
associated purely with mine production.
[211]
They could be associated
with the environments
[213]
within which they're operating, so.
[215]
And licenses that people need to operate,
[218]
whether it's a formal
license from a government
[220]
or a social license
from a local community.
[223]
I mean, those are still challenges
[224]
that mining companies need to navigate
[226]
and kind of work their way through.
[229]
And that contributes to the complexity
[231]
of mine production today,
probably just as much
[234]
as it did many, many years ago.
[237]
Narrator: Identifying gold
mines is a daunting task.
[240]
It can take up to 10 years for geologists,
[242]
chemists, and engineers to
examine a potential site.
[246]
And even then, the likelihood of a mine
[248]
being developed into
a productive gold mine
[250]
is less than 0.1%.
[252]
Only 10% of these sites
contain enough gold
[255]
to justify further development.
[258]
But aboveground, gold is everywhere.
[261]
On our fingers, around our necks,
[263]
and even in our mouths.
[265]
Gold is used in medicine, architecture,
[269]
and almost every electronic component.
[271]
We even launch gold back
out into the universe
[274]
from where it came,
[275]
not only as a reliable component
of spacecraft circuitry,
[278]
but also in the lining
of astronauts' visors
[281]
to protect them from
the sun's harmful heat
[283]
and ultraviolet light.
[285]
So, with all that in mind,
it might surprise you to know
[289]
how little gold there
actually is here on Earth.
[292]
If you melted down the world's entire
[294]
aboveground stock of around
190,000 tons of gold,
[298]
it would form a 72-foot cube.
[300]
However, if that was divided up equally
[302]
for every person on Earth, we'd all get
[305]
roughly an ounce of
pure, 24 karat gold each.
[308]
That's about $1,500 worth.
[312]
So, how does this volume divide out
[313]
into different industries?
[316]
Hewitt: If we have a
look at the 190,000 tons
[318]
of stock of gold aboveground,
[320]
the lion's share of it's in jewelry.
[322]
Around about 50% of it is in jewelry.
[325]
The next level down comes
to private investment.
[328]
So, that could be individuals
holding bars or coins,
[331]
or, indeed, individuals holding a share
[333]
of an exchange-traded fund.
[334]
And then you've got central banks.
[336]
Central banks account for around
[337]
about 17% of that stock of gold,
[339]
so a very significant volume.
[341]
And then the final element,
around about 13%, 14%,
[344]
is technology or dentistry.
[348]
Narrator: Is the future of
gold as bright as its surface?
[351]
New deposits of gold are
increasingly hard to come by
[354]
and increasingly difficult to locate.
[357]
Geologists have estimated
that only 55,000 tons
[360]
remains buried away in the Earth's crust.
[362]
Which means, if current
global mining rates continued,
[366]
we could run out of newfound
gold in just 20 years.
[369]
So, as gold mining continues to slow
[371]
and the costs associated
with mining increase
[374]
to meet the challenge of extraction,
[376]
gold could become even more expensive.
Most Recent Videos:
You can go back to the homepage right here: Homepage