Gold is only a long term sov when denominated in fiat currency.
With 2% added to the total supply yearly, you’re looking at compound growth if 2% is mined annually, the supply doubles roughly every 35 years.
How much gold does china have? How much gold is in fort knox? Says who?
Historically, it was less inflationary due to technology and people's limitations to mine or transport gold relative to all other options, it held its value best and was easiest to authenticate.
It stayed money because had other important properties too: it is relatively portable/durable, recognizable/verifiable, divisible, universally desired and scarce.
Gold supply shocks are not new at flooding the market and suddenly lowering values.
Sudden supply surges dilute gold’s scarcity, which can trigger deflation or inflation, depending on how economies adjust. It's just been a several decades since the last time it happened.
Back when Spain hit the Americas in the 1500s, they hauled back so much gold it spiked inflation across Europe, prices in Spain jumped like 500% over a century, tanking their economy because the value of gold crashed.
Same deal with the California Gold Rush in the 1840s, England and others got hit with economic chaos as gold flooded markets, dropping its value and messing with trade balances. Sudden supply surges dilute gold’s scarcity, which can trigger deflation or inflation, depending on how economies adjust.
All of this also effects supply:
Large-scale gold capture has gotten more efficient with automated drilling and blasting, which cuts costs.
New tech like thiosulfate leaching, unlike the old cyanide methods can hit 85% recovery with less environmental damage.
Ocean floor mining, like the Solwara 1 project in Papua New Guinea, is targeting gold at depths of 3400 feet, using advanced underwater robots and ROVs.
Gold's in seawater at super low concentrations. It’s not yet cost-effective, though combining it with desalination plants or other unforeseen advancements could change that.
Also of course, in time, all governments plunder/confiscate their own citizens' gold and make it illegal to transact in. All governments take a large percentage at border crossings, it's among the first things a warring army will take from the people.
Gold always leads to trusting third parties, it always directly leads to fiat money.
Gold is spoils of violence and war. Gold is costly and dangerous to secure, needing a vault or other defense mechanisms to protect, carry or transport.
Counterfeit gold is incentivized to and does advance. Give a street merchant gold and how do they realistically validate its authenticity?
Gold led to and always leads to trusting a third party, which always gives way to corruption via central banking and thus fractional reserve banking, arbitrary debt creation, fiat money and authoritarian governance.
