what do tou mean by money replacement, like muses money substitute? money means coins, on the old sense, and utxos are like a con you can divide.
digital gold i suppose you mean as in reserve asset like how banks hold it to secure their currency. a base layer, settlement.
why it is confusing is bitcoin is not suitable as a payment method, it is more useful as a settlement periodically for an actual payment system lke lightning, which is like a correspondent bank pair, you in one place, me in another, each side tracks a channel that is the balance of how much either side received or spent.
the whole bip110 thing is about the ongoing attempts to destroy bitcoin's value as a settlement layer by making it into a digital casino with "assets" and "smart contracts". but that is what taproot is for but strangely nobody wants to admit taproot is specifically intended for enshitcoinification, and has zero legit use in the settlement layer thesis.
