Metals Stocks: Gold is effectively shiny Bitcoin: Citigroups Buiter

MADRID (MarketWatch)A six-thousand year old bubble, shiny Bitcoin, and something that no self-respecting central bank should hold in reserves ever.

That was Citigroup analysts, laying into gold in a note that came out a day ahead of Thanksgiving, as the investment bank opened the debate on golds value ahead of a crucial decision by Switzerland on whether the central bank should more than double its gold holdings.

The Save Our Swiss Gold campaign aims to force the Swiss National Bank to hold a fifth of its assets in gold within five years and prohibit the bank from selling gold in the future, as well as repatriate any gold overseas. Organizers accuse the bank of mismanaging the nations wealth property.

While gold bugs are hoping for a yes vote, most analysts dont see that happening. December gold GCZ4, -0.57% which traded around $1 lower to $1,195.60 an ounce on Thursday in electronic trading, with U.S. physical markets closed for Thanksgiving Day, has seen a choppy year, which has left prices more or less flat.

In the note, Citis global chief economist, Willem Buiter, said the Swiss vote doesnt even make sense. Requiring a central bank to put 20% of its balance sheet in any single commodity, even if that commodity had meaningful intrinsic value, represents a highly unorthodox and risky investment strategy he said.

And its also a custodial riskholding all of a nations physical assets in one place and preventing the SNB from ever selling gold again would in short make those holdings worthless, he added.

Another reason central banks shouldnt be dropping a chunk of reserves into gold? The price is volatile. The below chart shows gold on a nominal basis, which show its money values in different years, and real value, which adjusts for price levels in those years. As far as real prices are concerned, if someone had held on to gold in 1971 and held it up to 2013, the annual real return would be 4.3%, said Buiter. Reasonable given the riskiness of the asset.

Gold is like Bitcoin: Buiter says gold is unlike any other commodity, and the only thing that comes close to it is Bitcoin and other virtual currencies. Gold is costly to extract from the ground and refine to a degree of purity, its also costly to store and has no real use as a producer good, and other alternatives are out there for industrial uses.

Gold has become a fiat commodity or a fiat commodity currency, just as the U.S. dollar, the euro, the pound sterling and the yenare fiat paper currencies and as Bitcoin is a flat virtual currency, said Buiter. The main differences between them are that gold, like Bitcoin, is very costly to produce, while the production of additional paper money has an extremely low marginal cost.

Count up the deposits of commercial banks with the central banks, which together with currency in circulation make up the monetary base, as fiat money, then the incremental cost of fiat base money creation is zero, he said.