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by tmnvix 3128 days ago
I think you might have it the wrong way around. Gold is valuable despite being used in electronics.

Unlike most other metals, gold is suitable as a currency partly because it doesn't get 'used up' in industrial processes in any significant way (where it is used its malleability ensures only tiny amounts are necessary - one gram of gold is enough for a square metre of gold leaf). Similarly, its use as jewellery is not so much to create beautiful objects, but as small portable stores of wealth[1] - in the world's biggest gold jewellery market (India) the price of jewellery is pretty much the same as the price of the raw materials (i.e. gold).

[1] Funny story. I once had a colleague who married an Indian woman in India. He came back to work wearing a lot of gold jewellery (watch, bracelets, rings, necklace or two, etc). Even he thought it was ridiculous, but he felt obliged to wear it. I had to explain to him that he wasn't given all of it with the expectation that he'd actually wear it - it was basically his wife's family's way of giving them money.