Is Disenchanting a redundant system? Is the gold vs shard competition an engaging conflict?

Now that I'm back in early maps, I'm comparing Act 1 vendor gold prices to iLvl 65 loot's sale prices. They're about the same, meaning you cannot get shards for a cheap gold cost. A trash yellow you sell is 1k~2k gold or 1 regal shard (very rarely 2). That's about the same price as buying a yellow from Renly on level up.

This had me thinking further: why is disenchanting in the game? Historically, PoE 1 gave you currency shards when you took your trash gear to vendors (and in Harbinger content). When you were in PoE 1 maps, the time taken to go to a vendor and click the items to get those shards was about the same time it took to open another map and get whole orbs instead: less clicking fatigue and similar time cost.

I digress. Point is, in PoE 1 you got shards in exchange for trash gear. In PoE 2, there are 3 ways to dispose of your trash gear: gold, shards or quality currency. You can't do that last one on all items and that currency has no competition in what it does. What about gold vs shards? Let's focus on regals as it's so easy to pick up transmutes and so easy to see blue items in vendors.

You use regals on gear with 2 good affixes, hoping for a good 3rd one. Converted to gold costs, for an early mapping character that means about 15k gold worth of yellow gear has to be disenchanted to get one shot at this. 15k gold is about the price of a 5~6 mod yellow item at a vendor, which probably has as good or better chances of having 3 good mods. Using a regal lets you choose exactly what item base you want upgraded, but if you're not too fussed about that you can get a decent result for gold. Especially as you get to look at the mods that rolled before paying the gold cost.

Gambling with Alva et al is not very gold efficient to get a good base with good mods, but when desperate it's another reason for stocking up on gold instead of regals. Combine with players wanting to experiment (read: buy a lot of respecs) and there's a strong incentive to cash in unwanted yellows instead of disenchanting them.

On the other hand, there are lots of uses for regals besides making gear. Player trade, strongboxes, unlocking the 2nd tablet slot on towers (Doryani keeps selling white waystones) and doubtless more as more mechanics come online. Even for getting good gear, many players want to DIY their gear instead of going to the vendor out of psychological principle.

I'm curious how the players feel about this conflict and potential future design direction. PoE 1 history shows alternate directions: shards from Harbingers instead of disenchant and gold being converted to crafting orbs from Kalguraan shipping. Heck, there's already a unique strongbox to convert gold to currency (some of the time). What if they added more ways to turn gold into currency and removed disenchanting? Something more engaging than just a currency vendor.

Do players like having to choose between gold and regal shards? True you don't have to pick, gold slowly accumulates from selling whites and blues too. It's just when levelling you kinda need yellow sales to afford the good yellows from vendors before they refreshed because you levelled again.

Currently I sell all rares until I have about 800k of gold. Then disenchant them until I have about 100 regals. Then I don't pick up rares unless it's something I could use.

I'm SSF and picking up rare and disenchanting/selling them is tedious. I like gambling because it means I don't actually have to look for bases. Instead I can just store gold and use it when I need to.