I am one of the guys that says money do not have intrinsic value. Or more precisely it "value" is due the fact that they enable trade and enable time shifting the trade (That is store value). My mental analogy is that money are lubricant. Too little everything grinds to a halt (deflation crisis) or too much and it burst seals and spills everywhere (inflation crisis). So there is clear signal to the population that something is wrong with money. Then if you live in democracy you have say on the policy. That is why democracies tend to have more stable currencies compared to autocracies. And lack of this stabilising feedback loop is main critique of cryptocurrencies. Note how unstable value of bitcoin is - it goes from massive inflation to deflation and back very often (single years time spans).