You mention “holding real money”. What exactly do you mean? Cash in your mattress? In the bank?
Real money are those substances that have all the attributes of money.
Money must be durable, divisible, fungible, consistent and (most important for the present day) it must act as a store of value.
Paper currency has most of these attributes. However it does not act as a store of value. It is created in vast amounts with very little work by the fiat power. For this reason the dollar, the pound, the yen (etc) have all lost most of their buying power over the last century - and hundreds of fiat currencies have lost 100% of their buying power.
Our modern electronic currency is even worse to the extent that it can be created with no work whatsoever - not even ink and paper are required.
Gold and Silver (however) have all the attributes of money. They will maintain (in fact they will greatly increase) in buying power in the event of a collapse of fiat currencies.
Hope this was helpful.