Good questions, but I think the answer for gold is pretty weak as well: >Underpinning the value of gold is that if all else fails you can use it to make pretty

Good questions, but I think the answer for gold is pretty weak as well: >Underpinning the value of gold is that if all else fails you can use it to make pretty things. That's true, but where would the price of gold be if there was only jewelry demand left in the market? I think gold as a store of value depends on psychology, not on jewelry. But it is a kind of psychology that is impossible to replicate for anything newly invented.