Gold doesn't corrode and can melt on a flame, making it easy to work with and seal it as currency. Silver and gold are beautiful metals that are easy to turn into jewelry, and both precious metals have their own devotees in fine jewelry circles. Gold and silver are considered precious metals and are some of the most valuable materials on the planet because they are boring. They are rare, but not impossible to find, and are relatively unreactive, so they don't oxidize or explode when exposed to different substances.
Gold is also a popular choice for investing, such as in a Gold IRA 401k. However, gold will always be king, because it's really the most boring element. Even silver tends to tarnish, so it has a low level of reactivity, while gold will remain intact and unchanged for thousands of years. The rich loved gold for the reasons you donate and because a pound of gold or a pound of sterling hold much more than a pound of grain. Now, the previous story explains why gold and silver were initially chosen as the preferred monetary method in many cultures around the world, but the reason why they are still in such demand is because, over the millennia and centuries, despite moving to paper money in most parts of the world, the global economy was once linked to the gold standard.
Basically, the amount of money you owned could be exchanged for gold ingots, so the decided value of gold became an axis for world trade and economy. Thanks to the associations we have attributed to gold and to the science behind this attraction, gold also has a timeless appeal. Gold can stimulate a subjective personal experience, but it can also be objectified if adopted as an exchange system. Gold is the metal we'll turn to when other forms of currency don't work, which means that gold will always have value in difficult and good times.
Gold is a very heavy metal, almost twice as heavy as silver and three times heavier than copper, meaning that it is more difficult to counterfeit, which is important because only real, pure gold has the desired chemical properties.
