I’ve honestly never had a rocknose farm. Didn’t like the space it took up. As you say, the only real value has been for alchemical base. I always gathered alchemical base from T3 bearers and had more than enough. I would much rather see gold and silver used for currency like it was meant to be, rather than have rocknose farms to make gold bars. I can back the idea of them only making dust. Maybe then, we’ll see fewer giant cages with this purge change.

As for using coins for p2p merchant trade, I’d say only use gold, rather than silver. Leave the silver mine in tact. That way gold is harder to acquire, and you gotta choose whether to grind the coins down for dust, or use them for trading. Unfortunately… this doesn’t solve Siptah’s abundance of gold nodes. So… having another currency could be the easiest option.