[xorcist]

People spend a ton of energy, that could otherwise have been put to better use, to extracting small fragments of yellowish metal from beneath the ground, cleaning it up only to put it in another cave behind bars and locks. Then they go around loudly proclaiming how valuable it is.

A lot of work was spent moving it only to never use it. Value is a strange thing, I guess. One would think they could skip that massively expensive and somewhat dangerous unnecessary part and just count large numbers instead, or something.

[moccachino]

That's a valid point, but the removal of the physical step only serves to make the whole process even more absurd.

With gold bars at the very least you have in your hands a concentrated lump of actual material that will survive a power outage or a lost password or something.

But of course that whole process is as absurd as you point out today because gold holds residual value from when it actually was a convenient universally recognized store of value.