Its absolutely practical to trade in gold/silver historically. Its basically just how europeans do small transactions anyways (coins).
Anything larger its still practically because if you need to buy an expensive item well its going on the ship so who cares if you need a ship or cart to transport the cost of the item when you need a cart anyways to transfer the item.
It’s just mostly impractical at the scale of big business. Imagine banks transport gold or $100,000 bills to each other (but actually look up how they used to drive trunks to each other and fling bags of checks).
Today or ever? Today I'd expect silver to be more common purely for the market price of it. The only thing stopping people from using metal coins today is that no one else does.
If I were selling a car and someone had gold coins to buy it with, I'd happily take it.
Today or back in the day?
Its absolutely practical to trade in gold/silver historically. Its basically just how europeans do small transactions anyways (coins).
Anything larger its still practically because if you need to buy an expensive item well its going on the ship so who cares if you need a ship or cart to transport the cost of the item when you need a cart anyways to transfer the item.
It’s just mostly impractical at the scale of big business. Imagine banks transport gold or $100,000 bills to each other (but actually look up how they used to drive trunks to each other and fling bags of checks).
Today or ever? Today I'd expect silver to be more common purely for the market price of it. The only thing stopping people from using metal coins today is that no one else does.
If I were selling a car and someone had gold coins to buy it with, I'd happily take it.