Gold lacks utility (for the most part) - so the price of gold reflects its exchange rate to the prevailing currency basket. There is no need to price in gold ounces since the aforementioned "mechanism" exists to translate value. More importantly - the dollar is the reserve currency by consensus. It is tradable - and infinitely scalable. Gold would need to be "micro-shaved" if exchanged in physical form. If, with gold, you were to deliver a promise of delivery only - then you would have a currency again. If we were to revert to the gold standard - we could see massive relative price deflation as everything would need to be "squeezed" into the available gold value. This is the flipside of the runaway gold price that the gold bugs lust for. It would be catastrophic...