"who wants to lend money when you have no idea what money will be worth?" Easy. Don't lend in raw gold (or Bitcoin, or whatever). Create a mathematical constru

"who wants to lend money when you have no idea what money will be worth?" Easy. Don't lend in raw gold (or Bitcoin, or whatever). Create a mathematical construct that attempts to capture the value transacted and denominate your loan in that, and/or index your loan's value and payments to the in/deflation adjusted value of your currency. Quantitative finance and math in general was less well developed back in the gold standard days, and they didn't have computers. So they didn't invent such instruments. Today they probably would.