There has been an effort to use diamonds in place of gold since you can travel with them without setting off metal detectors. But the real problem has been the untrained eye can easily be fooled. The Singapore Diamond Investment Exchange (SDiX), has launched a new product they hope to compete with gold. Perhaps this may have some traction, but again, it is hard to see how this will really compete with gold unless someone is trying to move money from one country to another.
Many of the diehard goldbugs have actually abandoned gold and switched to cryptocurrencies. The underlying proposition is still the same – anti-dollar. The strange thing is that they measure their profits still in dollars which they can spend. Curious!