Hi, I've worked in the global mineral exploration industry for decades, both as a mine worker, an exploration geophysicist, and as a compiler of a global DB that now backends the S&P mineral intelligence division.

Let's clear up some things about gold.

1) It's valuable because it's valued ..

That's pretty much it, it's kind of rare, its shiny, it "stands alone" as a noble metal that doesn't easily react.

2) Much needed - it's used in jewellry, it's essential in high end long life zero maintaince space electronics ... a great deal of other uses (Gold Speaker Cables!!) are just pure performative BD (ie. it's not "essential") - other metals are in the same ballpark for conductivity, etc.

3) The greatest single application for gold, once mined at great expense, is to be formed into ingots and sit about as bullion as "proof" of work (digging a super pit and spending > billion to recover it per annum) and proof of wealth.

It's more or less solid crypto that persists after the power goes out, can be worn as shiny jewellery, and has some neat niche applications that it is essential for.

I'm not a huge cyrpto fan, although I did hang on the cypher punk boards where the bitcoin paper was first announced (as I have a math background) - I'm no fan of the vast amount of energy wasted (IMHO) on both gold extraction and bitcoin mining.