Not really: http://thismatter.com/money/banking/money.htm.
 
At one point spices were used as money as well.  How are those salt futures working out? 
 
Good money doesn't base its value on its practical use ability - it bases its value on its ability to be an easily transmitted, hard to counterfeit, fungible, resilient unit of debt and savings.  Gold does that extremely well; despite having a few recently discovered industrial uses (as in, discovered after we had been using it as money for thousands of years already) and looking pretty, it doesn't really do a whole lot. 
 
That's good money.  That's Monero too.  It does one thing really well, which is why many still prize it in 2016.  Monero is private just like gold is - in fact, it's the first time we've ever achieved that as a species.  That's a big deal. 
 
Salt was also used as money for a while, and it was rare enough that it made a fine commodity.  But then the world changed and salt lost all value.  Ethereum is a valued commodity, but whether it is most like salt, oil, or something else entirely remains to be seen.