[dragonwriter]

> Yeah, I mean, gold didn't work as a currency all those hundreds of years.

Actually, it didn't. Gold was almost never the exclusive currency, usually wasn't the most common currency, was rarely a significant direct currency (rather than backing for currency) when people actually used currency for most transactions, and when it became the exclusive backing for currency, only "worked" because the actual circulating currency supply became increasingly disconnect from the gold notionally backing it.

Gold, as a currency, works tolerably well much of the time (though still can break an economy with unexpected surpluses or shortages) in the way it was actually used -- the high-value-density one of several commodities used in currencies in systems where most transactions using currency don't use gold, and most transactions don't use currency at all, but not even tolerably well outside of that domain.