Gold depositories have the same issues as crypto exchanges have typically had - it’s almost inevitable that someone absconds with the actual gold without telling anyone, or ‘prints’ extra without backing assets, etc. and until someone does an audit or everyone tries to withdraw their gold/tokens/whatever, no one knows.
It also enables a lot of other scams.
[https://www.cftc.gov/LearnAndProtect/AdvisoriesAndArticles/f...]
For anyone reading, educate yourself so you don’t get defrauded.
Not all depositories are a bad idea in all situations - but be cautious.
(Also, historical footnote - the last credible audit of the gold at Fort Knox was in 1974, hah - https://www.usmint.gov/learn/history/historical-documents/in...)
So there is always a middleman, unless you’re on your own chain. But it’s distributed, no one can reliably pick who is going to be the miner (or always be the miner) because of the POW algorithm, and everyone can trust the outcome because of the way everything is structured. There are very strong incentives for everyone to try to mine, for instance, and the more mining power there is, the more difficult it is for anyone to have a controlling interest or monopoly on mining, barring special economies of scale in mining hardware, anyway. (Which do exist, but not enough to make it doable to get a monopoly right now)
Worst case, the miners can ignore your particular transaction indefinitely, but the counterparty can see that too, and it would require active collusion from a very large percentage of miners to even attempt that.
So it’s not a middleman like a bank or a payment processor. Rather a bulk processor who moves a bunch of opaque chunks somewhere for money without any particular regard for who or what as long as they get paid for it.
And since it’s global, that third party could even be some foreign gov’t or entrepreneurial individual.