Yes, and since damage is added there is some use for gold. You can craft golden apples which heals 100%
Apples are rare and making a golden apple takes 72 gold ingots. Not worth it.
Gold would only be useful for trade with an admin who spawns the items, it is useless to everyone else aside from building.
And I don't agree with the idea of spawning free lightstone (or anything else) for everyone, it makes torches obsolete. Maybe they can be traded for some gold or 64 torches.
Are we keeping the /spawn and /home commands? It sure would make things much easier if you could just teleport your way out of dangerous places. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing.