A beautifully put foundational insight by Lyn Alden at the end of chapter 6 in Broken Money:
“Overall, it’s the combination of the banks and the government that have power over the ledger that most people use as money in any banking system. For a gold-backed banking system, the only part of the ledger that individual users have control of is the precious metal coins that they retain in their own custody, and for that they rely on the properties of nature to maintain the integrity of the ledger. Once they surrender coins over to the banking system, they have begun to rely on a hierarchy of other people to control their money.”