[nootropicat]

Gold isn't money. It was when the US government (and other before) forced people to sell other wealth for it to pay taxes. It was an early implementation of money.

Gold has very weak utility today.

>I don't think money needs to be backed by anything.

Which was empirically tested for the last 13 years. What happens is that people get bored of old ponzi schemes and stop buying them, instead preferring to be early in new ones. Which is why inflation-adjusted btc is at the very early Dec 2017 price. Nobody borrows in bitcoin (denominated in it - borrow x btc, pay back x+y btc) for unrelated investments which is one of the main use cases for money.

>It just needs to be limited in its quantity

Artificial scarcity is infinite. Claiming first artificial scarcity is token is somehow special is just a marketing spiel - one that's visibly losing its effectiveness. Which is why bitcoin dominance is dropping so fast.