By the end of the 18th century merchants had mostly given up on high-value coins in favor of harder to counterfeit bank notes, moving away from trust minimization by substituting IOUs for the actual metal. A trust that in the 20th century would be heavily abused.
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Debasement was "legal" when the mint was a state monopoly with sovereign immunity from prosecution for fraud. Competitive private silver and gold mints, where allowed, were subject to common law and were highly trustworthy. Like Engelhard, etc., are today.
Still vulnerable when used at retail to counterfeiting, though, taking advantage of the difficulties involved in assaying metals during retail transactions.
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I am a bit confused. Historical evidence proves your point that gold was difficult to verify, but with a simple device like the one below I see rather easy to verify a standarized coin (specially before Tungstene was discovered)pic.twitter.com/Vral3pIvIJ
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Verification was not the sole, and in many cases not even an important, motive for the rising popularity of bank money relative to gold coin. Gold was simply less convenient than notes and transferable deposits--the last of these also bore interest.
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"Less convenient" than bearer notes how? More specifics needed.
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Larger gold coins were bulky; small ones were easily lost. In Scotland and Canada and other past arrangements where people were free to choose between the paper notes of private and largely unregulated banks and gold coins, coins almost completely disappeared from circulation.
End of conversation
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