Because of its preciousness, gold has always been regarded as the king of metals and an important commodity for preserving value. The price of gold hit a new low in the world at 1999. After that, it was in a downturn for many years, and it only entered an upward trend in the past two years. Especially since the beginning of this year, gold has repeatedly burst into high prices. A few days ago, the price of gold futures has exceeded $500 per ounce. I. History of Gold The use of gold as currency began in Egypt in 3600 BC, and the first gold coin in the world was Lydia (West Turkey) around 650 BC. After Persia conquered Lydia, money was widely circulated in the process of unifying the whole East Asia. Britain promulgated the monetary law in 18 16, which was officially transformed into the gold standard. Countries introduced the gold standard and the international gold standard was born. The meaning of the gold standard system is to regard gold as the basis of a country's monetary system and link the unit value of money with a certain amount of gold value. In the 20th century, the world monetary system of the gold standard experienced the chaotic period of two world wars. After World War I, until 19 17, major countries stopped gold exchange. 19 19, Britain resumed the gold standard again, but the disorder of the international monetary system intensified in World War II. 1944 In July, an international conference attended by representatives of 44 countries was held in Bretton Woods, a tourist resort in New Hampshire, USA, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), namely the World Bank, were established. The post-war world economic order represented by these two institutions is called "Bretton Woods system". Its purpose is to make up for the defects of the original system by linking the currencies of IMF countries to international currencies, that is, "gold or dollars linked to gold" at a certain foreign exchange rate, which is called "a managed new gold foreign exchange standard system". Second, the commodity characteristics of gold In the past 6000 years, the total amount of gold excavated by human beings is estimated to be about 142600 tons, of which 15% has disappeared, and it is estimated that there are about 1200 tons of gold on the earth now. In 2002, the relevant agencies had speculated that the current buried amount was about 89,000 tons. According to the annual output of 2,500 tons, all the existing gold mines will be mined within 35 years. Gold is not easy to corrode, has good ductility, and is soft and easy to process. However, because gold is too soft, it is generally used after being synthesized with silver and copper. According to the synthesis ratio, it is represented by "k". The purity of 24K is 100% of pure gold, and the purity of 18K is 18, which is 75%. Third, the supply and demand of gold mainly comes from the following aspects: 1. Newly mined gold in the mine. South Africa, the United States, Australia and Canada account for about half of the world's gold mines, and 15 major mining companies in the world are located in these countries. However, in recent years, the output of the four countries in the world has gradually decreased, while the output of Peru, Argentina and Southeast Asia in South America has increased significantly. The CIS, including Russia, is expected to bury a considerable amount of gold, and China's gold production has also increased year by year since 2000. In 2004, the output of gold was 2 12.348 tons, which was higher than that in 2003.