This is something I haven't thought of! Growing up in India, I know that majority of the Indians have their gold in the form of jewelry, and man I've seen people with so much jewelry it's borderline insane (coming from a guy who'd call himself minimalist). I certainly haven't seen people in any other country use gold/jewelry as much as Indians do.
If you'd travelled to Africa prior to 1930 (ish) you'd have seen many areas where copper and bronze bangles, rings, Manilla's were worn on the body being a dominant form of currency in a number of regions for some centuries.
With gold, IIRC, some 45% of annual extraction goes to jewelry {decoration | investment}, roughly 10% goes to actual 'practical' use, and the rest goes to pure investment hoarding.
In many ways the vast amounts of energy and resource spent on gold mining are wasted almost entirely just to have something shiny that is conventionally deemed 'precious' because it is shiny (and noble - doesn't react).
The total practical use of gold is about 12% of total gold (10% new gold per annum, 2% recycled gold) with 88% of gold going to some form of hoarding | possession.
