Was that because it just wasn’t working?
No, the gold standard was working. It limited government spending and taxation (because the government cannot print gold, and cannot easily raise taxes).
Politicians are naturally power greedy, so FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) decided to “nationalize” all of the gold in the USA with Executive Order 6102, making it illegal to own gold and forcing everyone to sell the gold to the Federal Reserve at a discount. Now, only foreign banks could redeem the US dollar for gold (which is what the dollar actually used to mean, some weight in gold for a dollar).
However, because politicians are greedy and are never satisfied, they continued with their money printing and spending, to the point that the convertibility of the US dollar to gold was no longer possible. Speculators knew that too many dollars were in circulation, and that the Federal Reserve could not honor the gold promises of the dollar. Richard Nixon then put the final nail in the coffin and took the US dollar from the gold standard.
But, in fact, the gold standard failed. Gold is annoying to transport, store, and failed to survive the meddling of politicians. Cryptocurrencies have a lot of advantages over gold (easy to transport, to store, resistant to politicians), so they will likely survive and thrive over the next years.
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Agree with this 100%. Crypto can be transferred around the world in minutes, without middlemen.
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