It was the quantity by weight of metal that was the money. The form of the metal was for transactional convenience and sometimes for display. Some pieces of jewelry were, like later coins, of standard weight, others could be cut in arbitrary places and weighed.
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Transacting in Bitcoin may be cheaper than transacting in actual gold coins or bullion. But it isn't cheaper than transacting with bank-issued IOUs denominated in an redeemable in gold, particularly when those IOUs can be transferred electronically for next to nothing.
In an ideal legal and political environment this might be true. But we don't live in anything close to an ideal legal or political climate. In today's political reality, and very likely tomorrows, trust minimization is extremely valuable.
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Also, the legal and political environments that make gold more valuable are the very ones that make trust minimization more valuable. "Flight to safety" is about real world political and even raw physical safety, not merely about risk premiums.
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As my follow-up makes clear, I'm distinguishing simple "transaction costs" per exchange from the question of trust etc. It's of course correct that bank money would be superior to bitcoin in some respects, but not others. That was no less so for gold-based bank money.
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