Yes, but there were practical limits to currency debasement when the currency was a physical commodity with intrinsic value. People notice when their coins start getting filled with lead, and there were serious political repercussions for it. You cant just conjure a trillion gold/silver coins out of nothing like you can with fiat, and the ability to do so is 100% guaranteed to be abused.

What @cheeseomlit said, plus: During the Age of Exploration/Colonization, competing European powers each minted metal currencies and couldn't reasonably debase their metals without immediately being out-competed (which is why the trusted purity of Spanish gold and silver coinage slowly dominated). The primary mode of failure for those empires was bankruptcy via war. The impossibly high cost of fielding armies around the globe was laid bare during that era. Paper money lets us (funnily enough) paper those costs over and live with the illusion that it's all a free lunch. But what we're actually doing today is debasement, and eating, vociferously, all of the deflationary efficiency gains won by 20th century technological progress.