gold is a share of a conversion of energy to dug up earth, and sometimes nasty mercury tailings.

Gold actually has practical applications. Just go to wikipedia and find out what part of the CPU of the computer you are using to write your comment upon is made of.

The price of gold doesn't come from it's practical applications, so that's hardly relevant. If gold were no longer hoarded by speculators as a store of value, its price would plummet massively as the practical application demands simply couldn't maintain its current speculative value.

Bitcoin has practical applications as well, on the Internet as peer to peer cash. But like gold, it's value comes largely from speculators, not its practical applications.

Which ceases to exist entirely after a mega-solar-flare.

Gold persists.

If the mega solar flare is mega enough you might get a few extra gold atoms. Think of the inflation!

Unless it also disables the security systems on your gold storage or erases your GLD shares or we forget we'd all agreed gold is valuable.

physical, bitchez!

(sorry, spend too much time on zerohedge...)

If there's a solar flare big enough to destroy every computer on earth, you won't have a chance to care about gold in the aftermath.