Hypothesis: The muggles don’t possess much gold. Most of the huge stacks of gold in places like Fort Knox are clever magical replicas, and have been for a very long time. Any wizard can easily see through the ruse, but the muggles are clueless.
How do we have gold that we use as a conductor? Perhaps when a muggle handles fake gold, it gets magically swapped with real gold from a small supply elsewhere. Or else, maybe fake magic gold is a really good conductor.
If most of the gold we think is in the Muggle economy is really in the wizarding economy, then wizards possess up to 170,000 tons of gold. 100,000 tons of gold divided between 1 million wizards is 100 Kg = 20,000 Galleons per wizard on average.
We actually observe that 100,000 galleons is a princely ransom and a rich fortune. Lord Malfoy is one of the richest people in Britain and he probably has on the order of a million Galleons. This seems compatible but somewhat unlikely; I would estimate less gold in the wizarding economy than 100,000 tons. And yet if they stole all the Muggle gold they’d have closer to 150,000 tons, not counting whatever they may have mined themselves.
Perhaps the only difference between fake gold and real gold is magical—if there’s a ritual that permanently transfigures a rock into gold, people can switch that with the gold in vaults. Of course, no one in the magical world would accept transfigured gold as payment.
And what about all the new gold the muggles mine, day by day? Wouldn’t that cause inflation in the wizard economy? And where does the swapped-out gold go?
How do we have gold that we use as a conductor? Perhaps when a muggle handles fake gold, it gets magically swapped with real gold from a small supply elsewhere.
When a muggle handles fake gold and it doesn’t work as a conductor, the Statue of Secrecy comes in and they get Obliviated and the gold gets swapped over so that it works properly.
If most Muggle gold is a clever Wizard fake, then the fakes are getting watched to ensure that those who handle the fake gold stay convinced that it’s real gold.
That’s an awful lot of surveillance. Would a spell which detects a Muggle trying to use jewelry/store of value gold for conduction and sounds an alarm be possible?
Hypothesis: The muggles don’t possess much gold. Most of the huge stacks of gold in places like Fort Knox are clever magical replicas, and have been for a very long time. Any wizard can easily see through the ruse, but the muggles are clueless.
How do we have gold that we use as a conductor? Perhaps when a muggle handles fake gold, it gets magically swapped with real gold from a small supply elsewhere. Or else, maybe fake magic gold is a really good conductor.
If most of the gold we think is in the Muggle economy is really in the wizarding economy, then wizards possess up to 170,000 tons of gold. 100,000 tons of gold divided between 1 million wizards is 100 Kg = 20,000 Galleons per wizard on average.
We actually observe that 100,000 galleons is a princely ransom and a rich fortune. Lord Malfoy is one of the richest people in Britain and he probably has on the order of a million Galleons. This seems compatible but somewhat unlikely; I would estimate less gold in the wizarding economy than 100,000 tons. And yet if they stole all the Muggle gold they’d have closer to 150,000 tons, not counting whatever they may have mined themselves.
… and Eliezer raised the value of Galleons significantly for this fic. Hmm...
What Wizards even know that electrical conductivity is a thing?
Perhaps the only difference between fake gold and real gold is magical—if there’s a ritual that permanently transfigures a rock into gold, people can switch that with the gold in vaults. Of course, no one in the magical world would accept transfigured gold as payment.
And what about all the new gold the muggles mine, day by day? Wouldn’t that cause inflation in the wizard economy? And where does the swapped-out gold go?
Alternately: The wizards already mined all the real gold too.
It’s like bitcoin mining—whoever steals Muggle gold first gets to keep it. Of course that’s the Americans.
Harry’s going to be disappointed when he gets muggle rich, and Gringottts rejects all his muggle gold
When a muggle handles fake gold and it doesn’t work as a conductor, the Statue of Secrecy comes in and they get Obliviated and the gold gets swapped over so that it works properly.
If most Muggle gold is a clever Wizard fake, then the fakes are getting watched to ensure that those who handle the fake gold stay convinced that it’s real gold.
That’s an awful lot of surveillance. Would a spell which detects a Muggle trying to use jewelry/store of value gold for conduction and sounds an alarm be possible?
Well, it’s magic. Meaning ‘If the author wants it to be’.
That’s not what it means in this fic.