One correct point you have, one is inaccurate.
We confirm that the Bank of England had already weaseled itself into the bill discounting business by 1912.
But Scottish free banking routinely discounted bills of exchange denominated in their own banknotes, even while the Bank of England held a monopoly on note issue in England.
So, the article here has a small error but the principle is correct.
However, it is completely wrong that the extension of credit (more precisely the creation of credit money backed by the proof-of-work of goods sold) "broke the last hard money."
The OP article correctly states that it was governments and central banks, statist forces, which broke hard money.
Politicians perverted the sound commercial practice of commercial bill discounting to be replaced by Fiat money creation against unsound, unfettered government debt.
Slight quibble with the Scottish free banking example. While they didn't have a formal backstop, they did appear to rely on the Bank of England for liquidity, much like the American banks in the 19th century, as well as others around the globe.
Got an article here that touches on it: https://mises.org/power-market/rothbard-free-banking-scotland
It is perhaps a stretch for me to say that free banking broke sound money, as a deleveraging event without a backstop can indeed happen and, if allowed to, you are still left with the bullion as total supply.
The issue is, while that's fine in theory, in practice, the inflated supply of credit that traded at par with money did have a devaluing impact on the money itself, as it of course had to. Just like a new deposit issued by JP Morgan increases the supply of dollars, despite the fact that the Fed didn't issue any new reserves, nor did the Treasury print any bills. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that the issuance of credit distorts, rather than breaks, sound money and its pricing in the market, but as far as the impact it has on the value in the marketplace, it seems to be a bit of hair splitting.
There are reasons why perhaps it's not fair to say this would happen with Bitcoin -- it's a lot easier to take custody of spot after all, and very little reason anyone might want to accept a BTC note in place of BTC. The idea that it'd ever trade at par seems pretty unlikely.
But I guess therein lies my disbelief that there'd be much reason to accept a bill of sale in exchange for spot Bitcoin. If interest rates were below 20% for any real size I'd be pretty surprised.
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