Actually, my fortune is increasing due to inflation! See, I have this huge loan (mortgage) and every year, due to inflation, this loan effectively becomes smaller and smaller.
It's hard to get a hold of, it's hard to store securely, it's hard to transport, and it's hard to get people to accept it.
If you're really considering gold or Bitcoin, you very likely care about many of those things, and you'll see that Bitcoin has distinct advantages for several of those problems, with a lot of potential to improve.
That's a social problem which would be solved by cryptocurrencies.
I can also recommend this podcast on the topic of current real world applications of Bitcoin: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/02/jim_epstein_on.html