[betterunix]

Currencies are not just stores of value. Real estate is a store of value also, but nobody uses land or buildings as currency.

Once upon a time, gold was used as currency. Merchants would have scales, weights, and other equipment needed to deal in gold. That is not how gold is used in today's world; there are only a few highly niche markets where gold is used as currency, and everywhere else you have either fiat currency or currency that is backed by gold (with fiat currency being vastly more popular these days).

It is also wrong to separate printed money from the rest of the money supply when you are talking about fiat currency. Paper money is just a representation of the currency; the value of a dollar bill is equal to the value of four quarters and equal to the value of a bank account with one dollar in it. Fiat currency is an abstraction created by laws, which is implemented in various ways (paper money, coins, electronic transactions, etc.).