What you describe has a lot of merit but it also explains the move from silver currency to gold. Gold has a lot of interesting properties from the point of view of coinage and an instrument of value:

1. Up until the fairly recently (ie the last century) it was the densest element anyone could get in quantity. This was not true for silver so silver currency could (and was) debased (like you say). This was more difficult with gold as doing so would lower the density;

2. Gold has a relatively uncommon appearance. There are very few substances that could imitate its look. Iron pyrite (aka "fool's gold") is the common one but it's not as dense and is harder. It's also why people would bite into gold coins to verify it;

3. Shaving or cutting coins was actually more of a feature than a bug. Consider "pieces of eight" [1].

Previous metals as a basis for coinage were more important than perhaps you're giving it credit for. Ultimately what happened was that the coins themselves because a store of value and the metal content became less important as counterfeiting coins wasn't typically trivial. This of course was what ultimately led to paper money.

[1]: https://www.kingmanyachtcenter.com/sea-history-what-is-a-pie...