Does store of value need utility?

I had fun last time I posted a bitcoin maxi ama. The people here actually gave good points, were understanding and just a good experience overall.

So I want to discuss the title with you guys today. Other communities are very closed minded or just end up making snide remarks.

Ill set up the discussion as I understand it, feel free to give me your points.

Lets pick a few non sovereign store of values that have held their value for long periods of time (so not counting bubbles like beanie babies, tulips and nfts).

Gold, silver, diamonds, pearls, corals, rolexes, vintage cars, memorabilia, pokemon cards.

Now out of these only gold and silver became money and the rest just became store of values and some even stopped being that.

Ill give examples

• Silver, during industrial revolution had shot up in demand. A lot of applications needed silver. Much more than gold. This caused industries to invest heavily in silver mining and considerably reduced the scarcity of silver. Since then silver has been devaluing against gold.

• Diamonds and pearls lost their scarcity when humans figured out how to manufacture/ culture them. The diamond industry formed a cartel to maintain scarcity of real and artificial diamonds. This let diamonds to stay expensive and the cartel to profit. Pearls have been falling in demand and price this whole time.

• rolexes, vintage cards, art and pokemon cards are the most "security like". They need to be verified by a third party and are neither accessible nor do they have a liquid market. But still they go up in price just for their scarcity.

Gold has continued to be the sov of choice due to its global supply, fungibility, liquidity, etc.

Now as I see it there are two types of buyers in these markets:

• Industrial buyers: These people buy gold to use it in their products. The gold in these products rarely ever comes back on the market. This includes electronics, lab equipment, chemical industries, decorative things like gold foil.

• Exchanges: These are the people who buy gold only to sell to other people. They can make the gold into jewelry, coins, bars only to sell them at different premiums. They also buy peoples jewelry, coins and bars at different discounts from people. These are the coinbases of the gold world.

Now out of all the gold that exists in the world,

• 10 percent gold is in all our devices. Inside these devices the gold is worth more than regular gold. Example: even if an iphone has gold in it, you are better off selling the iphone than extracting the gold to sell.

• 90 percent. This is what I call the hoarders. They buy gold in various forms and then hoarde it for life. They hold this to either display their wealth or to protect themselves from a doomsday scenario. We also have central banks in this group as they only use it for settlements and nothing productive. The regular population are purely hoarders and never sell this gold for more than what its worth in gold.

The industrial buyers are essentially short gold, as if they are able to source gold cheap, it would increase their profit margins. Example: an iphones price doesnt change because gold got cheaper, so just the profit margins improve.

The other buyers and hoarders are essentially long gold. Jewelers charge a percentage of gold value as "making charges" and the hoarders gain when gold price goes up.

So now my question is which faction of buyers make gold a good sov. Id argue its the holders and not the industries. Sure industries would give gold a price floor. But the holders make the number go up.

So now my conclusion is for a sov to be a sov and its number to go up, you just need a constant group of hoarders that keep addiing more and more gold to their stash.

In other words sovs dont need utility to stay sovs.

Big post I know. Let me know your thoughts.