money has always been functionally simple. It doesn't need to be a general-purpose data storage medium to work.

You can talk about money all you want, but I'm taking about Bitcoin, which always has been and always will be more than just money.

Bitcoin was never intended as a programmable money tho. I think you’re thinking of Ethereum without the money part.

Ever read the White Paper?

Well enough to know that it's not a holy document, is incomplete at describing the system, and is often misinterpreted by religious fanatics.

But not well enough to realize that in the paper, Bitcoin is considered only as money. Not as a repository for cat pictures. As you seem to imply.

Like I said, it's an incomplete high level document. Bitcoin whitepaper purists should note that the following things are NOT described in the whitepaper: script multisig block size addresses ASIC mining mining pools 21M coin cap decentralization 8 decimal precision 2016 block difficulty adjustment and much, much more...