I mean, most of the historic value in gold is not related to conductivity and almost entirely on aesthetics and scarcity (and the fact that you can mint gold in

I mean, most of the historic value in gold is not related to conductivity and almost entirely on aesthetics and scarcity (and the fact that you can mint gold into coins without lose an infinite number of times, but silver and copper also work there). "Pretty" is cultural. It's made up. It isn't objective. The industrial applications of gold come pretty recently relative to the cultural valuation of gold. The fact that everyone, everywhere thought gold was pretty 10,000 years ago AND it's elemental AND it has chemical properties that make it useful for applications now is why it's valuable. But it's still survivor bias and retconning that the Mayans and Romans had any clue what future applications there would be for gold.