Bimetallic currencies were a hairball for every major economy for decades. If you tie a currency to gold or silver alone, and the other a sort of token sense,

Bimetallic currencies were a hairball for every major economy for decades. If you tie a currency to gold or silver alone, and the other a sort of token sense, it generally works. When you try to do both, you end up with situations where the government gets incentivized to take a metal that's fairly low value, and stamp a design into it to infuse it with new value. Silver bullion in the 1880s that might be worth 60 cents an ounce suddenly went up to a buck and change when you turned it into a Morgan or Trade Dollar. I suspect the introduction of the $20 gold piece in 1849 (and possibly the $3 in 1854) were in part to sop up a glut on the gold market.