"We need to give the appearance that we're trying to appeal to fans of every edition, even the extreme minority players who mostly play pre-3rd edition D&D. Let's add in some useless cosmetic stuff from earlier editions to show how much we 'care'!"
On a more serious note, they said in earlier podcasts they wanted to have most things are priced in silver and copper so gold is made more valuable. That hasn't been reflected in the playtest yet, but hey, that's they claim their intention is.