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I really encourage you folks to look up the difference between currency and money, it will make it a bit cleaner.

You can have run an economy on pounds of gold, what matters is the exchange rate to currency.

In an industrialized society, where your rate of digging gold out of the ground is fully decoupled from how well the rest of the economy is doing, you will be constantly adjusting the exchange rate. That will sooner or later lead to speculation on future adjustments blowing up your gold standard.

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