Bitcoin was never gold. Bitcoin's closest analogue was Stonehenge. It was a decentralized public resource, constructed at great cost, and used to transact debts. Once a "cycle" everyone of import met and came to a consensus on who owned what, but as a consequence of this there could be no private transactions. All transactions of who owned what "sacred stone" had to be declared and acknowledged by all other members of those who were transacting. BTW, the concept that Stonehenge's purpose was to serve as a financial ledger is attributed to Reddit user /u/DonaldMcIntyre.
In actuality, Monero is the first digital gold, not Bitcoin.
I have posted this picture before, but it bears repeating that Bitcoin fulfilled all the requirements of being the first digital collectible (which was monumental - not to take anything away from it), but it was not the next true evolution of money. That may be a bold statement, but it's true. Cryptonote, and Monero by extension, is the next big evolution of money - and as a result will (imho) overtake bitcoin by value in time.
Bitcoin is simply
BitGold +
HashCash +
Reusable Proof of Work. It's "mining" function was designed to be analogous to gold mining.
Stonehenge's purpose is to maintain a time rift, where the same actions are played out (with minor variations), over and over again, with the end result being that the power of the circle will eventually be released to the outside world. Whenever this is faulted, however, the time circle resets and the same events attempt again to unfold. However, since time is passing in the outside world in a normal way, that within the time circle must also progress matching the time period of the real world while still attempting to play out the events within.
The original stone circle was built during megalithic Great Britain and inhabited by a pagan folk led by a Druid priest. The village priest then witnessed the formation of a supernova and somehow deduced that a black hole had formed shortly thereafter. Using a variety of psychic powers, mixed with folk magic, the priest was able to harness the power of the stones (which were natural magnets) and focus negative energy, via a beam of light, through the centre of the circle towards the black hole.
Monero plays the role of platinum to Bitcoin's gold because while (immutable/serene) BTC/Au mostly just sits in vaults, XMR/Pt have far more industrial uses (thanks to higher reactivity, they are superior catalysts).
XMR is also significantly more rare than BTC, with 18 vs 21 million total coin emission.