Your clone of Bitcoin wouldn't be a 'clone' any more than a lead bar is a 'clone' of gold.
You might call it bitcoin all you want, but no actualy bitcoin software would be fooled. (You might trick some people, but fraud has existed long before computers).
It's a lot less expensive to reliably distinguish a fraudulent bitcoin from a fraudulent goal bar.
So even if you hold the position that there is no perfect scarcity because fraud is possible-- the cost, difficulty, and success rate of that fraud matters greatly.
My clone of bitcoin would have exactly the same properties as bitcoin. Your lead bar doesn't have any of the useful properties of gold (ductability, beauty, conductivity, etc).
For most applications (including Gold's most popular-by-value applications, -- jewelry and sitting in vaults) you can substitute it with other materials with equivalent (or better!) physical properties.
If you want an element that acts like gold (doesn’t oxidize, high electrical conductivity, high thermal conductivity, malleable, etc.), you need gold. You can’t replace it with lead and get the same results.
If you want a string of bits that acts like bitcoin, you can replace it with Xcoin, for many values of X. You can even create your own coin which does whatever you need. You may not be able to replicate the network, which may provide some amount of scarcity, but it’s not the same as gold.
If you and 1 other person use the cloned Bitcoin, that's a network. How many other participants do you need before new Bitcoin is comparable in every tangible way to old Bitcoin?
Tell me, how do replicate the network effects of current miners? You know, the thing that prevents someone with decent mining power in their garage to take over your clone? (or do a doublespend, or whatever) The network effect is security. Which come from the expenditure. Which is sustainable with the rising price. Which was baked in through the declining emission curve. Beautifully well thought, and well executed.
I too was doubtful about bitcoin at first. It's just plain obvious now: first mover advantage, leading to the development of highly specific ASICs, with a side advantage of allowing the cross border trade of electricity when turned it into mining power. So if you live in some isolated place but with cheap energy, money!!
BTC is too big to fail. A success that can't be replicated or taken down as it was ignored for too long. Even more unimaginable now that it benefits some people who wouldn't let them happen without a fight, and who have the power and the money to give this fight.
Which will be promptly rejected as invalid since the nodes on the Bitcoin network validate everything. This is partially why (among other reasons) Bitcoin is transformative tech. It can resist quite easily individuals trying to forcefully change aspects of it, like say, cloning the entire supply of bitcoin.
You might call it bitcoin all you want, but no actualy bitcoin software would be fooled. (You might trick some people, but fraud has existed long before computers).
It's a lot less expensive to reliably distinguish a fraudulent bitcoin from a fraudulent goal bar.
So even if you hold the position that there is no perfect scarcity because fraud is possible-- the cost, difficulty, and success rate of that fraud matters greatly.