What was the Genoa conference of 1922?

Wikipedia:

Among the propositions formulated at the conference was the proposal that central banks make a partial return to the Gold Standard. The Gold Standard had been dropped to print money to pay for the war. Central banks wanted a return to a gold-based economy for easing international trade and facilitating economic stability, but wanted a form of Gold Standard that "conserved" gold stocks - meaning that the gold remained in their vaults and day-to-day transactions were conducted with the representative paper notes.

This partial return to the Gold Standard was done by permitting central banks to keep part of their reserves in currencies that were themselves directly exchangeable for gold coins. However, citizens under this new Gold Exchange Standard (also known as the Gold Bullion Standard or the Inter-war Gold Standard) would not receive gold coins of the realm in exchange for their notes, though this had been an integral part of the original Gold Standard now known as the Gold Coin Standard.

Under the Gold Bullion Standard, citizens of Britain and other European countries could only redeem their banknotes in large gold bars. Such bars were unsuitable for day-to-day transactions, but largely achieved the goal of keeping the gold in the vaults.

Mises:

How could the British try to have their cake and eat it at the same time? By establishing a new international monetary order which would induce or coerce other governments into inflating or into going back to gold at overvalued pars for their own currencies, thus crippling their own exports and subsidizing imports from Britain. This is precisely what Britain did, as it led the way, at the Genoa Conference of 1922, into creating a new international monetary order, the gold-exchange standard.

The gold-exchange standard worked as follows: The United States remained on the classical gold standard, redeeming dollars in gold. Britain and the other countries of the West, however, returned to a pseudo-gold standard, Britain in 1926 and the other countries around the same time. British pounds and other currencies were not payable in gold coins, but only in large-sized bars, suitable only for international transactions. This prevented the ordinary citizens of Britain and other European countries from using gold in their daily life, and thus permitted a wider degree of paper and bank inflation. But furthermore, Britain redeemed pounds not merely in gold, but also in dollars; while the other countries redeemed their currencies not in gold, but in pounds. And most of these countries were induced by Britain to return to gold at overvalued parities. the result was a pyramiding of U.S. on gold, of British pounds on dollars, and of other European currencies on pounds--the "gold-exchange standard," with the dollar and the pound as the two "key currencies."

Now when Britain inflated, and experienced a deficit in its balance of payments, the gold standard mechanism did not work to quickly restrict British inflation. For instead of other countries redeeming their pounds for gold, they kept the pounds and inflated on top of them. Hence Britain and Europe were permitted to inflate unchecked, and British deficits could pile up unrestrained by the market discipline of the gold standard. As for the United States, Britain was able to induce the U.S. to inflate dollars so as not to lose many dollar reserves or gold to the United States.

The point of the gold-exchange standard is that it cannot last; the piper must eventually be paid, but only in a disastrous reaction to the lengthy inflationary boom. As sterling balances piled up in France, the U.S., and elsewhere, the slightest loss of confidence in the increasingly shaky and jerry-built inflationary structure was bound to lead to general collapse. This is precisely what happened in 1931; the failure of inflated banks throughout Europe, and the attempt of "hard money" France to cash in its sterling balances for gold, led Britain to go off the gold standard completely. Britain was soon followed by the other countries of Europe.