There have been several Gold backed projects in the space before, tokenized Gold, the one that comes to mind is Xarum. Gold is more like a stable coin, if I want to hold gold, I will rather buy in the market than hold all these useless Shitcoins that are not backed by any gold, even if the Gold are real, how in the world am I going to retrieve them. Xarum team then claimed they have these Gold, but the project just vanished from Crypto space maybe the team has cart away our Gold bar.
In terms of retrieving gold, I explained in Youtube videos, where I'm the founder of GRC, talking about gold reserves. At this stage in time it's not possible to exchange GRC for gold, as there are so many anti crypto regulations in different countries especially USA. But I can see with the current economic trends (decline of USD, hyperinflation in Western countries, global housing crisis, wars, rise of BRICS nations) that starting from next year, gold reserved currency will return. All the federal banks over the world are stacking up on gold at the moment in 2023. So, I see that I would be able to open up stores where people can exchange GRC for gold in the near future.
Until then, I can use gold (only if holders vote for it) in the next bear market to buy back coins and stabilise the price of GRC, so it doesn't go down with other coins, making GRC more stable and secure.
In terms of your example, I understand that prople have been scammed a lot. I also invested in rugpulls before and lost my money. You say Xarum team. Do you know the team's full legal names, age, where they live, how do they look like and how does their voice sound? If you do, you can report them to police and start investigation and return the money. If they were anonymous, I don't know why would anyone invest in them. Our investors have all the information I just mentioned about me. If anything goes wrong with the project or gold reserves, the police can find me easily. So, that's how I prove that I don't have any malicious intentions.