The question is what people will do in general as automation increases... but also in general there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with being "useless" and living forever, given a practically unlimited amount of resources, which might be possible with space colonization.

It being an abstraction of "exchange value" leads to effectively being an abstraction of value, as it creates a reference system to compare things to each other. And the "use value" is implied.

Hmm (I'm not the one downvoting btw) resource-based economy sounds good, though the use of AI doesn't come without its own philosophical problems. But it's efficient, yes. Ultimately I think we're moving towards becoming (gradually diminishing) nodes of a super computer. The problem with meaning remains however: what do we prioritize? this defines where money flows to in our current system and where resources flow to in a highly efficient resource-based economy.

No, but that's orthogonal. Crypto (whether in its current form or as CBDCs) will allow to (efficiently) monetarize all social value (i.e. simply formalize it).

>If we cannot clearly separate monetary pursuits and meaningful pursuits in our minds

Money is just a handy abstraction of value, and value measures meaning. The problem in our society relates only to meaning, not money.