Money is just a medium of trust that you can exchange for other goods. This is the basic principal of money

Why gold is valuable?
It is solely because it's scarcity that make it valuable.
If gold availability as abundant as iron/steel/stone. Then it is just a conductive metal.

So gold never a suitable candidate as money due to its scarcity.
The scarcity of gold will hinder the economy growth.

For simplicistic eg.

One day you go to bank to apply your house loan or car loan. Banks tell you, there is not enough gold to loan you, so you cannot take a loan.
You cannot take a loan to buy the car. The car manufacturers have no business to do, need to lay off worker and sequence event going on to depress the economy.

If one knows how economy works, then gold surely is not a suitable candidate at all.

Care to explain? 

Overprinting of money leads to hyperinflation domestically and severe currency depreciation. Think of money as 'deferred goods/services'. If you do not increase your goods/services, any amount of money would just reflect back to the old level of goods/services. Look at the historical wars and what happens when countries increase the money supply to fund wars. From the Spanish conquistadors to the German Nazis, it all lead to the same ramifications to the economy as a result of 'money printing' to fund war.

And using gold as currency would just bring us back several hundred years. A gold backed currency (gold standard) is more practical. And I don't think it would actually do much to tackle the boom and bust of the economy. The great depression happened in an era where countries were still adopting the gold standard.