Block of Gold

Blocks of Gold (also known as Gold Blocks) are decorative mineral blocks that appear in the center of water dungeons (Upcoming).

Gold blocks can be crafted by placing 9 gold ingots in a 3x3 square in a crafting grid. The gold blocks can then be crafted back into 9 ingots again (even in your inventory crafting grid), making them more useful as a compact way to store gold ingots rather than a building material. They are also used in a recipe to make a more powerful variation of golden apples.

Mining a gold block drops itself (rather than ingots) as long as an iron or diamond level pickaxe is used, thus, no resources are lost. However, if they are broken without a pickaxe or with a lower pickaxe, they drop nothing, effectively causing the loss of all 9 gold ingots used to create the block.

Gold blocks are susceptible to destruction from TNT, and only require approximately 1 second to mine successfully.

Gold blocks are needed to build and activate the Nether Reactor in Pocket Edition.

Pocket Edition
Used as an expensive building block or compact storage of the ore.

Trivia

 * Gold and iron blocks are the only mineral blocks in Classic.
 * Gold and diamond blocks are the only mineral blocks to share the same textures. Iron used to, but as of Beta 1.9pre5, it was changed to a more industrial look.
 * In the Pocket Edition, four gold blocks are needed to create a machine called the Nether Reactor, which will provide the player with resources such as quartz, melon seeds, netherrack, Bed, Bow, Arrow and other various types of assorted items (more will be added).
 * Gold weighs 19,320 kg per block (cubic meter) and 1,236,480 per stack. Assuming that gold blocks are the heaviest item in the game and that all 36 inventory slots are used, the maximum weight Steve can carry is 44,513,280 kilograms or about 49,068 imperial tons. Excluding any armor he might wear. Moreover, he can sprint, swim, and jump while doing so.
 * In Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition, four gold blocks stacked on top of an obsidian block can be found inside the tutorial world's desert pyramid. This is a reference to the Achievement Hunter Minecraft Let's Play series, in which this combination is used to create the "Tower of Pimps", an item first created by Gavin Free, which is now used in many episodes as a trophy.

Goldblock Bloque de oro Or (bloc) Blocco d'Oro 금 블록 Goud (blok) Złoto (blok) Золото (блок) 金块