Transactions with physical currency are reversible, just not easily so. And solid gold was rarely used as a day to day currency, so you would have an amalgam which was subject to inflation as the government either changed how much gold backed it, or phsycially reduced the amount of gold in the coin.
For thousands of years people used actual gold, especially countries moving money back and forth between them.
Inflation in its current form didn't really exist. The exchange rate for gold of a country's currency didn't change much, if at all. The dollar went from $20 per ounce, to $35 per ounce during FDR, then lost the vast majority of its value, getting us to over $1,300 per ounce that we have now.
Physical money requires the person giving it back physically. Crypto currencies have a chain of transactions, you can just send the balance back to one of the addresses it was sent from. There isn't much difference there.
