Gold is a useful element, for sure, but there's no where's near enough of it to serve as a reserve currency. E.G. the U.S. reserves are worth about $1.2 trillion (changes each day, of course). Compare that to a national economy which has a GDP of over $30 trillion.

All these old gold bugs just can't wrap their heads around what exponential growth really looks like. But we can grow our productive capacity far, far faster than we can grow the supply of gold.