Quote from Ricter:
If we went back on the gold standard, would we all carry around leather sacks with gold flakes in them, or would we carry gold certificates printed by the government?
You could keep your gold in a privately run vault. You could buy and sell the stuff electronically, without ever having to move it. Only the ownership changes. That's how the big guys buy and sell bullion right now. If an Italian bank buys gold from a Swiss bank the gold is likely to stay in a Zurich vault, just the name on the label changes.
There are already small companies, like goldmoney.com, that do this for smaller gold holders. But no nation has yet made gold its currency, and you can't buy from Amazon with gold grams, so the idea hasn't taken off.
It's silly to think that with a gold standard you'd have to haul around several kg of gold to buy a house.
