Gold: a metal with magical powers

Gold is indestructible and has outlasted all other forms of money, says Dominic Frisby

Gold bars and coins
(Image credit: © Michael Gottschalk/Photothek via Getty Images)

I am going to the Edinburgh Fringe this August to do one of my comedy lectures. This one is about gold: its history, its fascination, its future. It really is the most amazing metal, not least because it is, as Spandau Ballet famously sung, indestructible. Life may be temporary, but gold is permanent.

No other substance is as durable – not diamonds, not tungsten carbide, not boron nitride. You can shape this enormously ductile metal into virtually anything. An ounce of gold can be stretched into a wire 50 miles long. You can beat it into a leaf just one atom thick. Yet there is one thing you cannot do, and that is destroy it.

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Dominic Frisby

Dominic Frisby (“mercurially witty” – the Spectator) is as far as we know the world’s only financial writer and comedian. He is the author of the popular newsletter the Flying Frisby and is MoneyWeek’s main commentator on gold, commodities, currencies and cryptocurrencies. He has also taken several of his shows to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

His books are Daylight Robbery - How Tax Changed our Past and Will Shape our Future; Bitcoin: the Future of Money? and Life After the State - Why We Don't Need Government

Dominic was educated at St Paul's School, Manchester University and the Webber-Douglas Academy Of Dramatic Art. You can follow him on X @dominicfrisby