Gold is an inanimate object, as is green cotton.
Gold is not supposed to kill fiat - fiat's own contradictions will do that (and many, many fiat currencies have blown up over the past 50 years).
Imagine that fiat does in fact die. I think it's quite clear that material goods will retain trade value, and based on their scarcity & usefulness we can work out exchange ratios and rebuild an industrial economy. But what will determine the exchange ratio of Bitcoin to silver? To oil? To beef?
Your question implies that the end of fiat would mean return to a barter society then? Are there no computers in this scenario? ALL assets theoretically undergo continual price discovery in the free market; bitcoin as a digital asset is no different (the critical point there is that btc is unique among digital assets in its unforgeable scarcity). To make the claim that it will not continue to have an exchange value - whether measured in gold ounces, or wheat bushels, or whatever - you’d have to explain why that might be the case. What would change, that humans won’t continue to value bitcoin?
I imagine the fiat financial network collapsing
Are there Bitcoiners building bitcoin-denominated commodity markets? If not, are you really serious about replacing fiat, or is Bitcoin just another fiat asset?
Bitcoiners need not create those markets any more than silver enthusiasts should try to create silver-denominated markets. Bitcoin needs only to continue to slowly (and perhaps, at some point, quickly) bleed cash balances from the pool of ‘all other assets.’ This, based on its absolute scarcity and its near-immaculate immortality, it is nearly certain to do.
Money is an endurance race. Hence, the repeated success of gold across civilizations and millennia. All bitcoin has to do is similarly not die. It does so much more, but simple survival is the crux.
