I'm not entirely convinced about Goldbacks. The main short to medium term issue I have with Goldbacks is with their durability. The long term issue I have with gold in general is the ability to verify its authenticity. This is more of a long term issue because there are no international merchants accepting it that I'm aware of yet. I think silver is much better in that regard, as there are affordable ways to verify that quite easily.

I think silver could be the future of local retail if people would only see its value, but gold is just too small for most retail transactions to be something that can be verified easily.

A more minor issue is premium. There has to be someone paying the premium to get them into circulation. who will that be?