Actually, all money is ultimately based upon production. Gold, platinum, and the rest are only valuable because humanity made them so, and they were made so because of the time needed to find and extract them. DeBeers understands this and so controls the diamond market -- if "unregulated" diamonds hit the market the bottom could fall out of it. Gold is actually pretty common; its value only comes from the fact that humans value it and think it scarce.

(Noted; I am quite aware that the return on the gold, etc. extracted must exceed the costs of extraction. Gold IS common; it's just not economically feasible to extract it. Nor does my statement above include the value of gold, etc. for use in science or manufacturing.)