The Silver Standard in a Fantasy Setting

Before I launch into a discussion of fantasy economics, I'd just like to apologize for going dark last week. One of my two cats, Bodega Bay, had a stroke and I did not feel up to continuing the blog immediately following her death.

Anyhow!

I have heard the argument, repeatedly, that because D&D uses the gold standard it is somehow not as realistic or representative of the middle ages as certain other RPGs that I could name (Hârn, for one). While it is true that D&D generally does not represent the middle ages very well, I would put forth the argument that this is not because of the gold standard in coinage. Indeed, I have tried to align the 10th Age far more with the historical middle ages myself, and yet I never changed the coinage from gold to silver. For a number of reasons, I don't believe that silver coinage represents anything fundamentally true about the medieval period, and I shall enumerate that belief here.