There's definitely an emotional component to investment (a line I often hear from property investors vs equity investors is "I can touch and feel my investment, what about you?"). The tangibility gives a much stronger sense of ownership and is also probably one of the reasons why hardware wallets are so popular in the crypto community.

That said, most people who buy gold as investments these days do so through ETFs or some other paper-based method so they never even see the gold themselves, let alone get a chance to "touch and feel" it.

Eh, try to explain to people that money (as in USD) is the same thing as Bitcoin, except in centralised databases (plus a very small portion in portable pieces of paper/metal). There's a database in the FED that tracks who has how many dollars (it's coarse grained, banks subdivide it into accounts themselves). And new dollars are minted all the time when someone is issued credit, ending their life when the credit is paid back.

This is not to defend Bitcoin, but it is mind boggling how few people ask themselves "where does money come from, exactly?".

>cryptocurrencies being artificially constructs doesn't sit well with some non-techies

fiat currencies that non-techies do use are also artificial constructs. There is however the gold bars in federal reserve/national bank myth so the fiats appear as non-artificial to many people. Possibly that makes the difference. Or, more likely, people use fiat currencies since forever and don't really think about that. I believe more "the thing that exists for ages and I'm familiar with" vs "the new thing" thing. Anyway I'm not trying to invalidate your point, my experience with talking to non-techies about cryptos is more or less the same as yours