People spend a ton of energy, that could otherwise have been put to better use, to extracting small fragments of yellowish metal from beneath the ground, cleaning it up only to put it in another cave behind bars and locks. Then they go around loudly proclaiming how valuable it is.

A lot of work was spent moving it only to never use it. Value is a strange thing, I guess. One would think they could skip that massively expensive and somewhat dangerous unnecessary part and just count large numbers instead, or something.