Other than tradition, gold really no longer has meaning as a value storage and exchange medium. The lolbertarians say, "But gold is King! Gold is solid and real! Gold is nigh on indestructible!". It's also cumbersome and wide open to speculation bubbles and busts, as is any physical commodity. It's in the same general class as tulips and Beanie Babies, although it at least has many practical uses in industry and retail goods.
Any monetary system of economics and trade is based on a tacit social contract; a hard and fast cultural belief that money is a value unit worth trading for goods and services. Fiat currencies do have the vulnerability of their intrinsic value being tied to confidence levels in their issuing governments' reliability and transparency, as well as what ever degree of trust in the reliability of the nation's population to be productive and inventive in practical, constructive ways. Fiat currencies also leave a country vulnerable to economic sanctions more so that a gold standard would for that very reason. However, in this day and age, no nation is a true, self-sustaining island unto itself. Gold based or not, if a country chooses to not play fair on a level field, it will ultimately wither away. Witness the PDRK. It only "survives" on luck and black market dealings with the outside world. Should Putin continue down his crazy warpath, and fight sanctions with gold, the already tattered and breaking Russian economy will become even more chaotic; panic hoarding and speculative price gouging galore. The people will end up eating him alive.
