Adrian,
Not sure why such aggressive response - if you want gold, buy gold. Just be aware of it not being great storage of value and that is what my post was about.
As for the new question on the good medium of exchange - it is whatever your community will accept and want, and is highly situational. i.e. back in early nineties during civil war in my country, the water heaters (spiral and a plug basically to boil water anywhere there was electricity) were great medium of exchange - the water was dirty and dangerous to drink, having drinking water was good. One water heater plug in thingy easily traded for AK. Gold at that point was absolutely useless and instead was an invitation to get killed or kidnapped. for my friends a little more south from where we were , their food plant was destroyed by fighting and all they had was cheese wheels - those and cheese became medium of exchange, people learned to cook bred out of cheese wheels (don't ask me how as I have no idea)
There is one scenario where gold/precious metals and items truly shine - if you have to bolt and leave the country. I remember a podcast interview with a son of a Vietnamese immigrants who left when south Vietnam lost the war and what this person said was basically "we were wealthy, had plantations, had business in Saigon, had connections and "friends", had armory worth of guns plus people to protect us and ours, but when Communists came none of that mattered. plantations were no longer really ours, businesses were chattered, friends or people we paid to died or flee the country, and we knew too well that few dozen family with AR rifles stand no change against armored divisions. so we took what family kept in gold, paid/bribed to get out and used the remainder to start businesses in the new country including a set of laundromats". I agree with the guy who spoke, this is where small ,portable, untraceable, asset like gold matters. in other cases you are better off owning means of production (of food, of energy, or security, etc) vs a chunk of metal