Gold as an element is not possible to counterfeit. We know of both standards that fraud can 'easily' be introduced despite the background of this unbreakable uniqueness to both bitcoin and gold. Obviously we've had great failures in bitcoin and the price even falls when this occurs as people then doubt its viability and secureness. However that is not the actual fault of bitcoin but in its usage and so to with gold.
On that reasoning jay is correct, gold cannot be counterfeit. Deception of course is always there. Every large purchaser of gold should melt it down and make their own bars not rely entirely on trust, I believe that occurs. Gold coins are often subject to degradation of some kind, history shows many cases where banks have suffered losses in accepting but more often governments degrade the gold content and devalue their currency as present governments today are printing money. The old gold sovereigns were commonly accepted below weight, it was routine that loss due to wear and tear occurred. Its an argument against gold, not 100% fraud but people did deliberately damage coins, take gold fragments off bags of coins then hand it in as for a full deposit.
Holding bitcoin does have different risk, though its slightly superior to physically suffering that kind of small loss I guess. The banks could always refuse a worn coin, or people even but often its very small amounts. As its not physical bitcoin is more volatile and so losses occur in the exchange markets, its a different kind of loss and doubt that comes with a purely mathematical worth
