Currency needs to withstand reasonable wear and tear! Gold coins are a good example of durable money.

An economy would not be able to function if money actually grew on trees. Inflation would be so bad that there would be no more leaves left on the planet. There must be some way to constrict the supply so that money is earned.

You need to be able to spend your money no matter where you go. Your house is valuable, but you cannot take it with you where ever you go and trade it for other goods.

Whatever form of money you use must be acceptable to function. bitcoin is valuable, but I can not trade bitcoin for a sandwich at subway.

Currency needs to be complicated enough, and produced with enough uniformity so that it can not be counterfeited

We need varying units of smaller value to trade effectively. Livestock is not divisible. If you cut a cow in half it looses all of its value.

In a barter economy you can only make a trade if you just happen to need exactly the same good or service the other party is offering . If I am a dentist , I can only trade with people who have bad teeth and hope they have what I need.

There are certain things that are better stores of value than money, like houses and baseball cards because money suffers from inflation. However , since money is more liquid than these assets, it is an acceptable store of value