Gold seems to be everywhere these days. Point your TV remote, and a liquid crystal screen lights up with an infomercial pitching gold coins. Check the business channels, and you’ll find multiple panels discussing the pace of gold’s price acceleration, and its benefits as an inflation hedge in perilous times.

Surf the Web and you’ll see charts chronicling gold’s incredible rise from around $300 an ounce in the 1990s to over $2,000 today. Tune in to talk radio, and you’ll quickly notice that many of the most prominent sponsors are companies selling gold as a sound diversification option.

It’s truly a golden age, with retail investors, central banks and governments around the world swelling demand and bidding up prices.

In this 21st-century gold rush, everyone is looking for an anchor: something solid and tangible that will moor their money to a bedrock of timeless value.

Across the ages, gold has always been that anchor. Alchemists have tried to create it. Imperial powers have set out to plunder it. Royal families have hoarded and squandered it. The world’s oldest surviving currency, gold will always be synonymous with value.

Currencies may come and go, but gold survives — and adapts. An example of its adaptability is the way some cryptocurrencies have attempted to link their digital value to gold.

Many investors in this cyber-investment sector have wondered: What is the basis of value for a cryptocurrency that is not backed by hard assets? At times it seems there’s only a handful of people in the financial industry — and perhaps in the world — who truly understand how value is conjured from the kaleidoscope of equations that create a single bitcoin. To skeptics, it seems like a high-tech magic trick, in which the coin that you thought was in your pocket finds its way into the palm of an illusionist. A Dogecoin or Ethereum token backed by gold seems less ephemeral, and certainly more reassuring.

Similarly, retirement accounts have increasingly sought to offer the stability and security inherent in gold. Companies such as Los-Angeles-based Fisher Capital Group specialize in establishing self directed IRAs that allow customers to add precious metals to a retirement account, and to periodically adjust the amount of gold or silver held within that IRA. This has been particularly attractive to seniors on fixed incomes, many of whom spent a lifetime saving for retirement, only to see inflation erode their portfolios at the very moment when they need to make regular withdrawals. 

Fisher Capital Group is a company that subscribes to traditional family values and supports conservative political views. This value set resonates with a large segment of the prime consumer demographic interested in owning gold within their investment portfolio. 

Celebrities are often spokespeople for investing in gold. Radio personalities Glenn Beck, Mark Levin and dozens of small- and medium-market broadcasters discuss the benefits of gold on their programs and endorse particular companies. Rising cable network Newsmax sometimes displays a split screen when covering political rallies, with a graphic advertising gold prominently posted on the right.

In the case of Fisher Capital Group, Roger Stone is a visible supporter, and the company is also an active participant in events hosted by Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk.

Politics has come a long way from the days of William Jennings Bryan, who as a presidential candidate in 1896 famously declared:

“If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

The precious metal wasn’t even slightly dented by the white-hot rhetoric. History records that William Jennings Bryan lost — three times — and that gold triumphantly endured as a cornerstone of stable money, prudent business decisions, and sound policymaking.  

The above references an opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a licensed professional for investment advice. The author is not an insider or shareholder of any of the companies mentioned above.