You think that people were sitting and doing nothing, because everyone was hording gold, because it would be worth 1% more in year? Really?
The main function of money is not transferring value. It's keeping track what society as a whole ows to whom. Transferring is just a secondary job. And there's absolutely no need to incentivize it. That's why some cultures used stuff like big rocks as money.
Money is a good money, when you don't want to part with it. And its crappy money, if everybody are just looking for a way to get rid of it.
All the speculative bubbles that we're seeing are caused by lack of real-money. People are trying to get rid of their fiat, and park the value anywhere else.
And it's not very productive when young famillies can't afford to live anywhere, because the houses are used as speculative investment and essentially.. money. It was actually much better when otherwise useless pet rock was taking a function of keeping track of debt in the society and inflated and deflated according to real market conditions.