I am a "Multi" button Master!
The traditional silver to gold ratio seems to vary between 10 and 16:1. So you can see how skewed present valuation are.
I always thought the ratio ranged from 40:1 to 60:1.
So here I am in 2023... I'm a father of 2 children and I just lost my job. In fact, everyone where I live pretty much lost their jobs because where I live is in the city, where valuable natural ressources don't tend to grow. The world has become so scarce that natural ressources are the ONLY bargaining factor and gold is judged upon its practical value, not its symbolical value. What will be the value of gold and the value of all money then?
That's a very long and involved discussion on the nature of money.
However, for the Readers Digest version, "money" is a store of value, a medium of exchange and a unit of account. It is also whatever people believe it is. Different societies have used different objects for money - gold, silver, paper money, animals, cigarettes, clam shells, even giant shells at the bottom of the ocean that cannot be accessed!
Generally money is of symbolic value. What is a "dollar" exactly? It is an intangible representation of what people accept as value, nothing more. But people use dollars or any other currency because it facilitates economic transactions. It has value because people
believe it has value. If people stopped having faith in the currency, its value would collapse.