The value of money, wether it is paper, electronic or metal, is not determined by how shiny it is, nor how big the headquarters of the central bank printing it is, nor how impressing the drawings on the notes look like; it's how much faith the users of the money have in its value. Sticks of wood have been used as money, as was salt, sea shells, etc. As long as someone believes that the money you are about to give her/him in return for something will in turn be accepted by another person in return for something else, the first person will accept your money. If the first person does not believe the money you are about to give will be accepted elsewhere, that person will not accept the money.
Imagine the following: faction R decides to shift from paper to electronic money. They will secretly put masses of forged paper money onto the market. The banks as always check money properly before they accept it into an account and they will notice the forgeries. Stores will be afraid any cash they accept cannot be put into their bank accounts, because they might be forgeries, so the stores stop accepting cash. People not being able to spend cash anywhere will stop believing in its value and will no longer accept it either. Of course by now, faction R has already publicly and loudly campaigned for supersafe electronic money, which has none of these issues.
The trick of putting places of famous people and magnificent buildings on cash, and having large headquarters with statues and a two-story fountain, and an important sounding name like X Central Bank or First Bank of X, does work on most people and they will believe in the value of the money not realising it is themselves who give that value to it, not the famous people or big buildings.
My point to all this is that the value, even of gold, silver, or any other precious metal, is not some elemental particle buzzing around it; the value is not a tangible thing. And even though people have generally considered shiny things to be of value, this belief can be reprogrammed (and boy, isn't faction R skilled at that), so gold, silver, etc. can lose their value. Also, electronic money by itself is not evil, and precious metals are no supercure to everything either.
For some more good information on money, check for example: http://www.xat.org/xat/moneyhistory.html.
But i have faith the universe will provide my needs.
