The United States had a gold based currency for a century and it prospered.
That is a rather simplistic view of the situation. They had a series of ‘financial panics’ during those years. This site: http://www.thoughtco.com/financial-panics-of-the-19th-century-1774020 recounts panics in 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873 and 1893.
I read the book, The Lords of Finance ( http://www.amazon.com/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-World/dp/0143116800/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1TEOR1ZZ194KJ&keywords=lords+of+finance&qid=1692624411&s=books&sprefix=lords+of+finance%2Cstripbooks%2C144&sr=1-1 ) and they said that it was prosperous until the population rose enough to put a strain on the gold supply, then things got tight until another gold strike was found, although, at a quick glance I couldn’t see the correlation.
While I know our current path is leading to disaster, I am not sure gold is the ultimate solution.
nacl