Commodity money as a theoretical backing for federally issued "gold certificates" to substitute for the gold. Between 1933 and 1970 (when the U.S. officially left the gold standard), one U.S. dollar was technically worth exactly 1/35 of a troy ounce (889 mg) of gold. However, actual trade in gold bullion as a precious metal within the United States was banned after 1933, with the explicit purpose of preventing the "hoarding" of private gold during an economic depression period in which maximal circulation of money was desired by influential economists. This was a fairly typical transition from commodity to representative to fiat money,
Commodity value currencies can devalue, often catastrophically, currencies with considerable commodity value are known to better maintain their value; a government can print as many fiat bills as it wants with relative ease, the same is not true of mining precious metals. This leads some investors to purchase goods and debts with high commodity value, which are inherently safer than those with low, or no commodity value, minimizing risk by sacrificing potential return. Commodity value In the field of economics, the commodity value of a good is its free market intrinsic value under optimal use conditions. In a free market, the commodity