[qengho]

Not at all. Gold by itself is a currency / medium of exchange. It doesn't need any "statist fiat" to make it so. The fact that states (or other entities) might issue redeemable paper certificates or receipts (or dollar bills) as a convenient stand-in for gold deposited with them is entirely irrelevant. Gold is already money before that and without that.

[mpyne]

Gold is only "money" inasmuch as it is accepted as currency, to pay debts, etc. If cowrie shells were as acceptable then they'd be just as legitimate money as gold.

Or for a better example, cigarettes as currency in prison.

[qengho]

Sure, but this has nothing to do with the point that gold is not money by statist fiat.

Gold's real scarcity and base value are what make it suitable for use as money and therefore universally accepted as money for thousands of years.

Cowrie shells might also make an acceptable non-fiat currency if cowrie shells were really scarce (they're not, because one can presumably breed cowries and generate them at will - something that was perhaps not so practical at the time when they actually were used as currency) or had a significant base value (again, they don't though they once did, but purely for ornamental uses). Similarly cigarettes are a currency in prison without any fiat being involved because they're scarce in that context and they have a base value (based on their use for smoking).

Bitcoin has neither real scarcity nor any basis for a lasting base value. It has illusory scarcity, and a transient base value based on the fact that in the current historical context, it enjoys network effects and near zero competition for certain use cases (illegal transactions where fiat currencies are unsuitable).

There's nothing sacred about gold either. If efficient nuclear transmutation of lead into gold were possible, gold would no longer be suitable as a currency. We'd have to switch to Latinum.