It's almost too good to be a coincident that as soon as the world started using fiat based currency, or currency that was able to be issued on fractional reserves, financial crises around the world started happening at a much faster pace.
That's simply not true. Before WWI there was a never ending succession of economic crises in industrial countries like US, Germany, England, etc which were all on gold standard then. It can be said that the war itself was an inevitable outcome of this economic dead end.
The gold standard period was not free of crises (as the OP states,) but the 'fiat money period' since 1971 has been the most financially unstable period in the modern age, with the possible exception of the period before and during the Great Depression.
The gold standard was not essentially different from the 'fiat money' system we have today, if you think about it. But the rate of elite-driven financial inflation did seem to be slower in those days.
What we consider as economic crisis today has little in common with what happened in that day and age, with thousands of people literally starving to death in the streets.
IMO the reason why the effects of financial crisis were worse in those days was that the elites could get away with it. In 1931 the Fed just did nothing and watched banks fail across the world (including the US) and the economy dive into the worst part of the Great Depression. Ben Bernanke 'apologized for the mistake,' but the objective fact was that the massive deflation reduced the degree to which the dollar had to be devalued against gold, and helped support the system in more ways than one.
The only difference today is, democracy is stronger, and the elites can't go that far any more. The election of nationalist populists across Europe and America just now shows that people will not take pain lying down, whether or not they understand what is really the problem.
This is why I'm personally invested in bitcoin a lot. I believe that it is able to provide everybody with a hedge against any financial crisis events that results in the bubble of the fiat system bursting. It may seem too distant right now to prepare for, but who expected Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Argentina, Greece etc. to have such huge financial crises, until it actually happened or it was very close to happening?
If the shit hits the fan in earnest throughout the world, cryptocurrencies will be worth next to nothing. People simply don't know what real crisis and economic meltdown means in practice as they never saw the one (in developed countries, at least).
When the shit hits the fan, most likely cryptos will be worth a lot more. The reason is that, one way or another, the elites will have to devalue state money against non-state money to inflate away the debt, plus keep life more or less comfortable, plus keep their state money stable, at the same time.