Ok, and what uses are those? If gold were only valuable because of electronics: * It would only recently have become valuable * The demand for gold would very quickly be met by limited mining since very little of it is actually needed The only other practical use it's put to is jewelry. Which *is* "merely people deciding gold is valuable." In theory it could be put to many more uses like guttering and water pipes but in practice it costs too much to extract to be used to that.