Gold was once the foundation of the monetary system. Countries backed their currency with stores of gold. It is now just another commodity that people buy and sell in the hope of making a profit. There is some industrial use of gold, but most of it is stored in vaults.

It is the most bizarre thing to do. Most of the easy gold has been found so now miners seek out ore with something over 5 parts per million to extract gold from. This is now done with large scale technology; great drag-lines and vehicles which gather the ore and transport it to a crushing plant after which a chemical treatment extracts the gold. It is not at all labour intensive but is capital and energy intensive. The rapidly depleting resource of petroleum is consumed to extract the gold which ends in effect as money, to be stored in vaults, without crating a corresponding equivalent of goods or services to buy with the "wealth" created.

When the productivity of oil wells declines to the point when demand is not met, its price will rise, and can do that without limit. All the gold in the world will not be able to reconstruct the oil and other energy consumed in producing the gold.There is no reverse alchemy that can turn gold back into the energy that went into the extraction of the gold.

It would be better to assay the ore and print gold certificates representing the gold to remain in the ground. People can then buy and sell the certificates and store them in vaults. In the end, the energy they would have wasted would still be available for essential uses.