The blue one is still around, but it costs $8/month. The gold one costs $1000/month

Yes so everyone rushed to buy the blue checkmark because that used to be for verified accounts. Then everyone lost all faith in the blue checkmark, so now they charge $1000 for authenticated accounts.

It's a massive bait and switch. The $8/month one is worthless.

If they wanted to retain a greater share of the value they were creating through authenticating big accounts they could just have charged $1000/month for the blue checkmark.