This practice, however, is usually associated with claims that a certain company, sector, or the entire stock market is going to crash and thus gold will be the only thing left of stable value. Gold bugs have a lot of published work and Web articles. They are sometimes among the first people to mention a pending problem, such as a real estate bubble. While they may be right sometimes, critics contend that overall goldbugs preach doom and gloom in an attempt to persuade others to buy gold, driving up the price so they can sell the gold they have for a profit. This practice has also been alleged to occur by those who short sell a stock. Unfortunately, it can be hard to distinguish the "doom and gloom" preaching from real solid research.

Gold bugs are also often associated with attempts to return to the gold standard monetary system and many like to point out what they perceive as the shortcomings of fiat money. Gold bugs may consider making such views known as a public service or even a public duty. Opponents contend that in the last several decades the price of gold has been far more unstable than developing-world currencies are in terms of each other. Proponents reject the basis of this assertion and counter that instability in the price of a commodity is dependent on the fiat currency. Since the 1990s many currencies have been more stable relative to gold than relative to the US dollar for instance.

Recently, gold bugs have pointed to rapidly rising oil prices and the unwillingness of China to significantly de-couple the value of its own currency (the renminbi) from the US dollar as complementary rationales for purchasing and holding gold. In this view, the relative value relationships between consumable commodities and variations in industrial capacity between markets increase the likelihood of chaotic behavior in the present international economic system because modern hard currencies (or fiat currency) lack full backing by gold reserves and therefore cannot establish empirically rigorous values for goods and services.

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