Exactly. There are plenty of other precious metals that could have been used for the same purposes as gold (e.g., platinum, palladium, iridium). But they aren't. For various historical reasons.

But elements are not interchangable and have important differences in properties, difficulties in refining, and workability.

Gold is tremendously useful for many applications and I believe all that you mentioned are brittle in comparison. I believe it's also rarer than a few on that list.

Mainly, I've heard a few people in my life contend that we only arbitrarily decided that gold has a use, or that it's mostly hype. I don't think that's the full case. It's workable, useful, biocompatible, profitability extractable, and obviously stunningly pretty. Not so much just culturally significant just on a whim or something, it's useful.

But this could also happen to Bitcoin and crypto bros would certainly argue it has already started to happen.