Gold isn't fictional at al, gnu. It's real, tactile, beautiful stuff. It can be very easily shaped into beautiful objects and it never tarnishes. It can be used in many valuable industrial processes as well. It is 100% real. Paper money is a completely unreal representation of an idea that resides in people's minds.

Who cares if you can't eat gold? So? You can't (or had best not) eat rubber, tin, steel, plastic, bone, ivory, jade, marble, maganese, lead, and a host of other eminently useful things either...but they are all very real...and they're all valuable in various ways.

The thing that really makes gold special, and always has, is its appearance, its workability, and the fact that it will never tarnish or deteriorate in a world where virtually everything else does. That's special.

We do not live by bread alone.