The idea of the traditional gold standard, is that bills are backed and redeemable, so, just like not yet distributed coins, with the gold in the banks and the same amount of redeemable bills in the market, it should be fine, just as good as the gold, if distributed.
Now here is the problem. Printing just a little more bills than there is gold, works fine, because most redeemable bills will not be redeemed. Then you can print even more, just a little. Only after some time, maybe decennia, the public will suspect that there is not enough gold to redeem.
At that point, the redeemability will be cancelled. Then we are at it again, with uncontrolled fiat.
So there is int the end no other choice, with gold, than to use gold directly as money. This is perfectly implementable today, with plastic coins or cards that contain fractions of grams of gold. You could also have redeemable bills, but they have to be privately issued with no government guarantee, so a suitable frequency of bank runs can keep the people alert and the issuers in check. The same goes for deposits for electronic payments.
Exactly, which is why I made Shire Silver, credit card sized units with small amounts of gold and silver in them. They make gold and silver as easy to use as the paper notes, so you don't need the paper in the first place.
But yeah, bitcoin has certainly made a strong case for being the primary digital currency, with physical currency like mine being relegated to physical exchanges.
