Maybe it's a good combination of characteristics. Maybe the fact it's so shiny shiny bling bling does the trick, so it's largely a psychological phenomenon. I don't know.
I just know one thing: Gold has been very valuable for 5000 years, and it will be valuable in the future. Gold and silver is the last "money" on earth to lose its value. The only way gold goes is when NOTHING except the goods themselves is excepted anymore for payment (gas for bananas, cabbage for cigaretts). That's really all you need to know.
You see the fundamentals regarding the value of gold are largely unknown yet that is quite irrational. How can you "not know" where its value originates but be certain that it will always be valuable? Faith, in lack of substantial evidence of value, is irrational. The only thing that keeps us going is that "other people have valued it too" as a form of self-validation of our own thought process which is, in itself, irrational due to the lack of proper facts. At the moment one realizes this mass paranoia they should stop and say "wait a minute, wtf are we doing here? this is wrong". But nobody does that. Some of the financial elite hint about the useless barbarous metal that offers nothing (and their logic seems sound but nobody hears them anyway because they are full of BS in so many other areas)...
5000 years is enough evidence for me, without the slightest doubt. Sometimes you gotta stop theorising and just look at the facts of what was/is happening. No irrationality about that. Everybody has to put the puzzle together for themselves.
Your conclusion doesn't clearly come out in your post, but in case you are advising against gold, I'm wondering how you could ever hold BTC...
When you go to pan some dirt and see a spec of gold in the pan, you rationally know that this is worthless in terms of $$$ (the spec that is) but your heart's BPM rise instantly, along with your excitement which jumps. It wasn't because your parents instructed you to react that way. It wasn't because your culture instructed you to react that way - the reaction was all yours and, if you analyze it, you'll see that its highly enigmatic. There's like a gravity pull / magnetic pull towards gold that seems to be "hardwired" in humans, irregardless of their upbringing, which in turns creates the gold rush effect.
In other words: It's so shiny shiny bling bling!
On another note: How are things in Greece? What do you think would help Greece now, eg getting out of the Euro?