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Boiling it down, the US Dollar is defined as our official currency simply because it is the only currency the government will accept in taxes.
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Slight correction: It’s a ‘Federal Reserve Note’ (fiat) vs. Silver Certificate (exchangeable for [legal tender\money] silver).
The latter (gold/silver) are the ONLY (true) currency, Constitutionally, that can be ‘tender in payment of debts’
Money is data, and money data at its root represents energy. The price of something roughly tells you how much energy was consumed in its production. It requires a stable amount of energy to mine gold or silver (or Bitcoin) which is why they can be used as money. Energy sources such as petroleum, natural gas, electricity could also be used as money except 1) they are hard to store and transfer, and 2) the amount of energy needed to acquire them changes frequently.