[everforward]

Gold is and has been a decentralized currency for a very long time. It’s mostly just very inconvenient to transport.

> Then we abandoned it in favor of centralized currency for some reason. I don't know, reliability perhaps?

The global economy practically requires a centralized currency, because the value of your currency vs other countries becomes extremely important for trading in a global economy (importers want high value currency, exporters want low).

It’s also a requirement to do financial meddling like what the US has been doing with interest rates to curb inflation. None of that is possible on the blockchain without a central authority.

[nottorp]

> Gold is and has been a decentralized currency for a very long time. It’s mostly just very inconvenient to transport.

Even precious metal coins became endorsed by one authority or another (the cities/banks/little kingdoms stamping the coins). Because you as a normal person don't have the resources to validate every single piece of gold/silver you are paid with.

There has also been a short period when every 3rd bank had its own paper currency. That seems to be gone too. Perhaps because as a normal person maintaining a list of banks you could trust was too much.

[everforward]

I don’t think having a centralized validation authority makes a currency centralized. Centralized currency usually implies the means to control that currency. While the monarch may control the supply of gold minted into coins, they don’t control the supply of gold itself.

It would have been an inconvenient currency for small transactions, but it’s still a currency.

The bank currencies were weird. Iirc, some of that was wrapped up in the Civil War and the Confederate currency being “official” but also basically worthless towards the end of the war. I think the Great Depression killed them, when banks became insolvent and their currencies became worthless.