>>105751985 (OP)Fiat (government tokens + credit systems) has been the historical norm. The gold standard was an expensive, temporary experiment that we mistakenly think was "traditional.
"There is overwhelming evidence that there never was a monetary unit which depended on the value of coin or on a weight of metal; that there never was, until quite modern days, any fixed relationship between the monetary unit and any metal; that, in fact, there never was such a thing as a metallic standard of value"
""The great cause of the monetary perturbations of the middle ages were not the rise of the price of the precious metals, but the fall of the value of the credit unit, owing to the ravages of war, pestilence and famine""
"Debts, as they fall due, must be met by credits available, at the same moment"
"Under normal conditions a banker would keep only enough coins or credits on the government to satisfy those of his clients who want them, just as a boot-maker keeps a stock of boots of different varieties, sufficient for the normal conditions of his trade; and the banker can no more pay all his depositors in cash than the bootmaker could supply boots of one variety to all his customers if such a demand were suddenly to be made on him."
source: From The Banking Law Journal, May 1913, pages 377-408 What is Money? By A. Mitchell Innes