Gold has minimal industrial applications, making it functionally useless. However, this very uselessness, combined with its permanence, allows it to be a pure store of value understood across all human cultures and historical periods, making it a uniquely universal form of money.
An insight dating back to Benjamin Franklin—that land could be used as collateral to create currency—has scaled globally. Modern banks have increasingly shifted away from business lending to become primarily mortgage originators, making entire economies highly exposed to land prices.
China is the world's largest gold producer and importer and exports none of it, likely holding ten times more than officially stated. A sudden declaration of its true reserves could function as a 'financial declaration of war,' severely threatening the US dollar's global standing.
Unlike most assets, land's supply is fixed and it is immobile. When demand rises, you cannot produce more or relocate it from cheap to expensive areas. This creates a fundamental 'haves and have-nots' dynamic, making its economics starkly different from other asset classes.
Japan's economic boom was brought to a hard stop by a massive land bubble in the 1980s. The subsequent crash triggered a financial slump from which the country arguably never fully recovered, serving as a powerful warning for nations like China with similar property market dynamics.