tbh that only works for so long:
And yes, they tossed out the initial attempt and started from scratch in UE5. But that was also several years (and multiple major updates) in the past.
Gold economy isn't that complex. Implement a few merchants and some useful consumables (arrows and health/mana potions, for example) and there will at least be something to spend it on. Maybe toss a cosmetic item or two into merchant inventories for player to buy. Then set up a timer so the inventories reset after a while. In UE4 they were also creating a money sink in the form of the player camp. It would take all of one update for them to implement something similar here.
There's not really any reason it can't have been done by now, except that the devs haven't bothered with it because they're focusing on other things instead.