The classical view is that money solved the double coincidence of wants, which was the major issue of barter: for one person to "buy" something they wanted, they had to be in possession of a specific good the seller wanted.

Precious metals were very well suited to solve this problem before electronic communication, when buyer and seller were in the same place.

What Bitcoin solves is the new issue of buyers and sellers separated by vast distances, where physical money can't be directly transferred from buyer to seller.