I'd bet that plenty of states insisted that the money they demanded be paid in gold or other precious metals (all of which are useful in other ways.) Other governments may have demanded rice or grain. The government doesn't want your goats. If you're giving up your goats for taxes, it's probably to a tax farmer who you have been granted to as a concession, and that tax farmer pays for the right to tax you in goats in gold (or rice, or grain.)

When talking about money with no use, such as USD or bitcoin, however, they've got nothing to hold them up but the demands of the government that issued them to be paid in them.

The US dollar is just an IOU from the government that gets cancelled if you owe the US government anything other than prison time. Bitcoin is an IOU from no one, and the only way to spend it is to find a sucker who wants bitcoin.