Personally, I don’t. The audits are few and far between, and I haven’t followed it closely, but there were several instances in time where the (gold ETF + physical future commitments + whatever else they counted) required more gold than was known to have been mined and not used in industry.

What this means is that, at moment in time, if the music stopped, someone would be left without gold - though with the distributed nature of everything, it’s hard to say who.

Fake bars are routinely discovered in storage, collateral, etc, see e.g. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/chinas-kingold-shares-tank-o... for the most recent high profile (but by no means unique) example.

Even if they have the actual gold, they have the actual gold. If they decide not to give it to you, there needs to be enough of a functioning court system to remedy that; and even then it may take time - just because you have a legitimate claim to that gold doesn't mean a court can easily decide that you're the only one with a legitimate claim to that gold.

Even with a functional court system you can lose it with the stroke of a pen[0]. Physical gold however would require more effort to take from you.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

That's true, and it's a risk. I am unclear on whether it should be technically considered "counterparty risk", although it plays out similarly.