Silver was the first shitcoin and, AFAIK, USG doesn't even have a silver reserve. In the way silver stole value from the scarcity standard that was gold, "precious metals" became a thing. It's the same with shitcoins breaking digital scarcity up into "crypto". A basket of any number of other metals that are not gold having monetary premium doesn't make much sense, but I suppose it makes more sense than having a basket of any number of other imaginary tokens.