A gold specie standard existed in some of the great empires of earlier times. One example is the Byzantine Empire, which used a gold coin known as the Byzant. But with the ending of the Byzantine Empire, the civilized world tended to use the silver standard. An example is the silver pennies that became the staple coin of Britain around the time of King Offa in the year 796 AD. The Spanish discovery of the great silver deposits at Potosi and in Mexico in the 16th century led to an international silver standard in conjunction with the famous pieces of eight, important until the nineteenth century.

In modern times the British West Indies was one of the first regions to adopt a gold specie standard. Following Queen Anne's proclamation of 1704, the British West Indies gold standard, was a 'de facto' gold standard based on the Spanish gold doubloon coin. In the year 1717, master of the Royal Mint Sir Isaac Newton established a new mint ratio between silver and gold that had the effect of driving silver out of circulation and putting Britain on a gold standard. However, only in 1821, following the introduction of the gold sovereign coin by the new Royal Mint at Tower Hill in the year 1816, was the United Kingdom formally put on a gold specie standard. The United Kingdom was the first of the great industrial powers to switch from the silver standard to a gold specie standard. Soon to follow was Canada in 1853, Newfoundland in 1865, and the USA and Germany 'de jure' in 1873. The USA used the American Gold Eagle as their unit, and Germany introduced the new gold mark, while Canada adopted a dual system based on both the American Gold Eagle and the British Gold Sovereign. Australia and New Zealand adopted the British gold standard, as did the British West Indies, while Newfoundland was the only British Empire territory to introduce its own gold coin as a standard. Royal Mint branches were established in Sydney, New South Wales, Melbourne, Victoria, and Perth, Western Australia for the purposes of minting gold sovereigns from Australia's rich gold deposits.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century some of the remaining silver standard countries began to peg their silver coin units to the gold standards of the United Kingdom or the USA. In 1898, British India pegged the silver rupee to the pound sterling at a fixed rate of 1s 4d, while in 1906, the Straits Settlements adopted a gold exchange standard against the pound sterling with the silver Straits dollar being fixed at 2s 4d. Meanwhile at the turn of the century, the Philippines pegged the silver Peso/dollar to the US dollar at 50 cents. A similar pegging at 50 cents occurred at around the same time with the silver Peso of Mexico and the silver Yen of Japan. When Siam adopted a gold exchange standard in 1908, this left only China and Hong Kong on the silver standard.

The gold specie standard ended in the United Kingdom and the rest of the British Empire at the outbreak of World War I. Treasury notes replaced the circulation of the gold sovereigns and gold half sovereigns. However, legally the gold specie standard was not repealed. The end of the gold standard was successfully effected by appeals to patriotism when somebody would request the Bank of England to redeem their paper money for gold specie. It was only in the year 1925 when Britain returned to the gold standard in conjunction with Australia and South Africa, that the gold specie standard was officially ended. The British act of parliament that introduced the gold bullion standard in 1925 simultaneously repealed the gold specie standard. The new gold bullion standard did not envisage any return to the circulation of gold specie coins. Instead, the law compelled the authorities to sell gold bullion on demand at a fixed price. This gold bullion standard lasted until 1931. In 1931, the United Kingdom was forced to suspend the gold bullion standard due to large outflows of gold across the Atlantic Ocean. Australia and New Zealand had already been forced off the gold standard by the same pressures connected with the Great Depression, and Canada quickly followed suit with the United Kingdom.

Governments faced with the need to fund high levels of expenditure, but with limited sources of tax revenue, suspended convertibility of currency into gold on a number of occasions in the 19th century. The British government suspended convertibility during the Napoleonic wars and the US government during the US Civil War. In both cases, convertibility was resumed after the war.

As in previous major wars under the gold standard, the British government suspended the convertibility of Bank of England notes to gold in 1914 to fund military operations during World War I. By the end of the war Britain was on a series of fiat currency regulations, which monetized Postal Money Orders and Treasury Notes. The government later called these notes banknotes, which are different from US Treasury notes. The United States government took similar measures. After the war, Germany, having lost much of its gold in reparations, could no longer produce gold Reichsmarks, and was forced to issue unbacked paper money, leading to hyperinflation in the 1920s.

Following Germany's example after the Franco-Prussian War of extracting reparations to facilitate a move to the gold standard, Japan gained the needed reserves after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. Whether the gold standard provided a government sufficient bona fides when it sought to borrow abroad is debated.

For Japan, moving to gold was considered vital to gain access to Western capital markets.

Great Britain, Japan, and the Scandinavian countries left the gold standard in 1931.

Some economic historians, such as UC Berkeley professor Barry Eichengreen, blame the gold standard of the 1920s for prolonging the Great Depression. Others including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman lay the blame at the feet of the Federal Reserve The gold standard limited the flexibility of central banks monetary policy by limiting their ability to expand the money supply, and thus their ability to lower interest rates. In the US, the Federal Reserve was required by law to have 40% gold backing of its Federal Reserve demand notes, and thus, could not expand the money supply beyond what was allowed by the gold reserves held in their vaults.