I know people out there who have invested a lot in gold under the belief that in the event of like complete societal collapse or hyperinflation, they could use it for purchasing.
I have the hunch it’s a scam, but I haven’t learned enough monetary theory, business, or economics to understand why.
You can short gold ETFs. Gold is highly speculative and has crashed taking decades to recover (~1980-2005). It’s basically boomer-bitcoin.
you can short EFT’s but shorting the metal itself is a different thing. As an element that has real world uses the market drives t he value.