[creshal]

> So, the gold thing doesn't match humanity's tradition until very recently.

Ish. There's no unified "human tradition" anyway. Mediterranean societies have used gold- and other metal-based tallies for thousands of years, until they eventually settled on (gold, silver) coins as a standard. Greek/Roman conquests and trade then spread the idea.

[RobertoG]

But my point was that there is an, admittedly polemic, abstraction that match all the human tradition: money is a token of debt.

In this view, one important consequence, is that the material of the token is not relevant. The use of precious metals is just an added security measure against counterfeit, but not the thing that make it valuable (that would be the debt that represent).

If this is true, part of the debate about strong money vs. fiat money just become pointless.