Money needs to be stable. In order to be stable, it needs to meet these 7 characteristics.
(1) It must be durable, which is why we don’t use wheat or corn, or rice.
(2) It must be divisible, which is why we don’t use art work.
(3) It must be convenient, which is why we don’t use lead or copper.
(4) It must be consistent, which is why we don’t use real estate.
(5) It must possess value in itself, which is why we don’t use paper.
(6) It must be limited in the quantity that is available, which is why we don’t use aluminum or iron.
(7) It should have a long history of acceptance, which is why we don’t use molybdenum or rhodium.
Only GOLD and SILVER fit all seven characteristics.
EVERYTHING else is inferior which makes them credit. They are essentially Gold substitutes.
If you had a race to see who was the fastest man in the world there can only be one winner and ONLY ONE person can hold the label of the fastest man in the world. It doesn't mean that the rest are slow it just means that they are not the fastest.
Value is ultimately determined by the person holding the money. "He who has the Gold makes the rules."
gold isn't that convenient for electronic transactions
Sure it is. https://kinesis.money/
You can back any currency with it and make it redeemable like how the USD used to be. There is no need to carry it around if you don't want to.
Isn't this kind of solution how we ended up with credit instead of money?
No. We gave up sound money when we let them take us off the Gold standard. That allowed them to print as much "money" as they wanted without having to have the Gold to back it up.
It takes many steps for you to get to fiat from Gold.
Whenever you reach trust in credit (redeemable paper/bit) for it to be considered as good as money, you have set yourself to failure.
Because that's when the trusted party can print credit (aka "money") via fractional reserve. And whoever can print credit, will eventually print credit, and it will eventually print too much. Then either the credit system will fall or people will double down.
And there's a wealth of incentives for the credit printers to try their best to double down.
The creation of the FED was not because they wanted to print credit, but was a consequence of banks already using fractional reserve and looking for governmental protection.
Executive Order 6102 was not because of "wanted more money", but because of the credit they had already printed would bite them in the ass, from wiki:
The same with the Nixon Shock. They had already printed too much, severing the final connection with Gold was just a consequence of that.
My point is, of course they will print more if they are allowed, but the first step, acceptance redemption paper/bit being as good as money, already allow them to print. That they will try to print forever more is a given.