Currency is value inputed, meaning it is how the person sees the coinage. In certain Pacific islands, I believe Palau, people use huge stone carved rings for coin. These things are bigger than truck tires. To this day, they are still regarded as heirlooms.
Back towards the ancients, there are other forms of currency, such as bushels of grain, trading livestock such as cattle, goat, sheep and horse.
Today we have currency that only exists in bits and bytes. Today we have meme coins.
Unless there is a particular high demand for gold and silver for various reasons, I am not sure about the long term value of gold. Both maybe good as an inflation hedge, but I don't expect their values to spectacularly rise unless there is some industrial demand for it. On the contrary, when people tends to get poor like when economy goes down, people will start selling off their gold and silver increasing supply while less people are buying it, causing prices to drop. It is for this reason why you don't see gold and silver having spectacular rises despite the economic situation. Instead it is what the rich people wants to buy, hence these people "input" value into something, whether its collectible art works, cars, real estate, bitcoin or equities. Lately there is now a new rage on NFTs.
