Bitcoin's only real use is to combat red tape. Without this, it's easily beaten by many other systems, for example a payment processor plus gold exchanges.
Bitcoin provides censorship-resistance (which you mentioned) and also freedom from counterparty risk (which you did not).
Backed currencies fail because you can't trust the people holding the backing to actually perform as promised. On a long enough timescale, the percentage of vaults that start defrauding the holders of their notes by performing undisclosed fractional reserves (a.k.a embezzlement )approaches 100%.