We went off the gold standard because we needed an elastic money supply. Gold is too scarce. If you took the total worldwide above ground gold supply and divided it by the population you would have less than one ounce per person.
Which brings us to fiat money. However, without discipline in government and in the growth of the money supply the value historically tends to fall against tangible goods(gold, food, gas). I have looked into bitcoin and it is a very interesting concept where the money supply growth is self-regulating. Which means "in theory", if I save a bitcoin, no bureaucrat can print 10 trillion of them and build war machines to drop on my neighbor. Of course when I later go to spend that money it has been devalued and I have been screwed.
I have seen people attack bitcoin as it cannot possibly be a "currency" because its not backed. Currency has been many things(seashells, pretty rocks, copper, gold, silver, pelts, cattle, paper notes). Taking this into the "big picture" I see a tech 0 civilization going through the growing pains of evolving into a tech 1 over the next decades.
If you wondered what a tech 1 currency looked like I can tell you its not the United States dollar. And i still dont own any bitcoins, yet. I just am letting to concept grow on me still.