As far as I know in developed societies trade hasn't been conducted using precious metals directly in quite a long time and at a scale completely different from the modern globalized economy. The closest we had was the gold standard (and other precious metal pegs) but those routinely broke in case of crisis. As far as I know the only serious economists advocating for the gold standard nowadays are the "Austrian school" which are generally seen as pretty controversial.
I'm not sure how Bitcoin relates to the gold standard exactly though. On its own it can't be debased, but on the other hand it's not tied to anything physical so what happens if a government decides to "fork" it into a new currency (which increased supply for instance) and use that to pay public workers and raise taxes? Wouldn't that effectively do the same thing as debasing the currency? After all bitcoin is effectively a pure concept. Those are interesting questions but I lack the economic knowledge to answer them.
I'm not sure how Bitcoin relates to the gold standard exactly though. On its own it can't be debased, but on the other hand it's not tied to anything physical so what happens if a government decides to "fork" it into a new currency (which increased supply for instance) and use that to pay public workers and raise taxes? Wouldn't that effectively do the same thing as debasing the currency? After all bitcoin is effectively a pure concept. Those are interesting questions but I lack the economic knowledge to answer them.