Do Other Metals Have Place In Treasuries?

MS Blogs
Dec 9, 2025
6 min read

Updated: Jan 15

In Part 1 of this series, we traced the forces that keep gold at the centre of global finance, from its declining reserves to its rising demand in a world shaped by geopolitics. If anything became clear, it was that gold's place is unique in this world.

Gold is exceptional, but what stops other metals from stepping into its role?

Silver is abundant in history, platinum is rarer than gold, copper powers the modern world, yet none of the other metals, despite their utility, have become reliable stores of value.

In this blog, we break down the essential criteria for a monetary metal and systematically compare how the rest of the metallic universe measures up.

To understand why gold has remained unmatched, we first need to look beyond it. A metal’s value is shaped by its scarcity, how much of it exists above ground, how quickly it is mined, and what it is primarily used for. By comparing these fundamentals across major precious metals, and key industrial metals, we can get a clearer picture of why some metals behave like monetary assets while others are deeply tied to economic cycles.

The World’s Metals at a Glance: Volume, Value and Real-World Applications

Table 1

The table above highlights a few simple facts. Read horizontally and you’ll see the two forces that decide monetary suitability: stock (how much already exists above ground) and flow (how much is added every year) and then the economic influence: what the metal is mostly used for.

Gold

A huge above-ground stock, modest annual supply, and overwhelmingly monetary demand make gold uniquely stable. Most of the gold ever mined still exists and most of it is held for wealth, not industry.

Silver

Large historical stock but heavy industrial dependence. Solar, electronics and manufacturing tie silver’s price to economic cycles, reducing its monetary stability despite its long history.

Platinum, Palladium, Iridium (PGMs)

Extremely scarce but above-ground stocks are tiny, and production is a by-product of other mining making it volatile. Demand is driven almost entirely by industry (autocatalysis, chemicals), making them unsuitable for monetary storage.

Copper, Nickel, Aluminum, Zinc

Abundant, heavily mined every year, and almost fully consumed by industry. Their prices follow business cycles, infrastructure spending and technology trends, not monetary behavior.

Key Takeaways -

Stock-to-flow matters more than rarity alone. A metal can be geologically rare but economically unusable as money if its above-ground stock is tiny or too dispersed. Conversely, abundant metals can’t become money simply because they’re useful, their large flows interfere with monetary function as scarcity will be difficult to achieve.

Industrial demand creates price cyclicity. Metals with high industrial exposure (copper, nickel, silver, palladium) tend to track GDP, capex cycles and technology adoption, making them volatile stores of value.

Supply prominence and control matter. Metals produced as by-products (many PGMs) are supply-inelastic, output doesn’t increase neatly if demand rises, creating price instability rather than the stable monetary behavior investors want.

Numbers alone don’t decide monetary quality. Next, we will test each metal against the physical and monetary properties that historically mattered for money.

The World’s Metals at a Glance: suitability of physical properties

Table 2

Despite failing the monetary test, every metal has a place

Looking across the table, something becomes clear. Gold is the only metal that checks every box across durability, portability, inertness, divisibility, industrial pull and most importantly a high stock-to-flow ratio supported by centuries of monetary acceptance. Every other metal, whether precious or industrial, falls short on at least one of these defining characteristics.

But this does not make them lesser. It makes them different.

Silver may no longer play a central monetary role, but it remains essential in areas like solar panels and electronics. The platinum-group metals, though unsuitable as stores of value, are important for catalytic converters and various industrial processes. And the major base metals—copper, nickel, aluminium, zinc—continue to support everyday life by enabling electricity, manufacturing, construction and modern infrastructure.

In short, these metals aren’t “lesser” because they aren’t monetary. They simply serve the economy in different, practical ways that make them valuable in their own right.

In other words: Their failure to become money has nothing to do with their value to civilization. Each metal plays a role so essential that the modern world would stall without it.

What this comparison really reveals is that monetary metals are not “better”, they're simply suited to a different type of demand: one that requires stability, longevity and resistance to the real economy’s turbulence. Industrial metals thrive because they interact with economic cycles. Monetary metals endure because they sit outside them.

And that leaves us with questions.

If only one metal today meets the full spectrum of monetary qualities, was gold’s dominance ever truly about human preference?

And if gold emerged as money because it was structurally superior, what does that tell us about the future? Could a new material, digital or physical, displace it?

These questions push us toward the next part of this journey.

Because to understand where money might go next, we must understand where it came from. In the next blog, we step into history and explore the evolution of money itself: from barter, beads and metals, to coins, paper, central banks and the digital era.

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