> it brought about the longest sustained period of economic growth in human history, without which we would not even have Bitcoin to celebrate right now

The industrial revolution happened while on the gold standard (with just a few short periods where it didn't apply, as I understand). Steam power, railroads, electrification, refrigeration, anaesthesia, early automobiles and so on.

I'm very fond of the computers that we have now (yay 20th century !), but it's a bit hard to brush aside the 19th century just like that. There's insane economic growth that happened in that period.