As I understand it, you believe the rapid advance of technology has recently undermined the historical effectiveness of gold as a store of value and that the same applies to any other possible commodity or basket of commodities.
You go on to express a preference for private currencies that you purport partially resolve the problems that these advances of technology have introduced. You offer a single sentence regarding this preference and I must confess an inability to follow it. Specifically, you say:
Personally, I think that an options market on assets as stores of value for competing, insured, private currencies is a partial answer to the problem.
Please elaborate. I have no idea what this means. More importantly, I understand neither the nature of, nor the rationale for, the private currencies to which you refer.
Our society has a LOT of assets, some of which even appreciate over time. Consider shares of stocks, a market basket of bonds, shares in real property (and there is nothing intrinsically wrong with gold mines) as the more usual form of such tradable assets. They have a unit of account (shares) that is convertable with a calculation. A hand-held wireless device could make it a snap. Those shares could even be insured, and that starts to look like a good deal when considering promises such as, "the full faith and credit of the US Government." At least they get independently audited and rated by someone with something to lose if they are wrong!
Calculating is getting cheap, which almost obviates the need for a unit of account. A currency based upon a range of assets, with the option of converting them to shares in ownership of those assets might well be store of value preferable to gold. The medium of electronic exchange is obvious and is done all the time with existing currencies when you buy with your VISA card overseas. Marketers of currencies would compete in providing superior currencies, much the way countries do now. They could offer that product with transparent access to independent verification of the assets, and the level of risk associated therewith, much the way we do now with bonds. Intelligent agent software could learn the preferences of the currency owner and diversify the holdings as appropriate. Conversions would be nearly instantaneous. Certainly there wouldn't be the need for a "reserve currency" as all assets could be in production. In fact, such a spread of currencies would reduce the propensity to have a "run" on a single asset and reduce the wild swings in an economy when one is preferred to others and but a single currency among many might be at risk.
There are a number of people doing some serious academic work on this, David Freidman (Milton's kid) among them. I have designed a free-market verification and insurance system that provides an effective set of checks and balances and those principles might be useful toward providing an effective alternative to civic currency.
Finally, consider those functions (medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account) as what they really are: a substitute for barter. They are a "transaction-facilitation service" and as far as I am concerned, there is no reason that government should have a monopoly on such a business. It has proven to be an untrustworthy agent and because of computers isn't really necessary. What we need from government is the final police power in support of the rule of law (even civil courts are being privatized through arbitration and mediation services).