Most Americans that have built up a sizeable amount of assets will as a matter of course, have a significant amount of those assets stored inside various banking institutions and/or brokerage firms, in which though their account clearly indicates that they are the owner of those assets, not always are they able to access their own money, without restriction.
That is to say, citizens of America, are subject to all sorts of laws, in which, assets can be seized or frozen by governmental agencies, law enforcement agencies, or creditors, when a given person, for example, is suspected of a drug offense crime, has unpaid debts adjudged against them, or has been convicted of certain crimes that mandate such a seizure. Of course, most Americans don't pay attention to much of that, because first of all they don't conduct their affairs illegally, or at least don't believe that they do, signifying that they are far too often too credulous for their own good.
For instance, wrong information and wrong identities can create the type of confusion in which the wrong party finds their account confiscated or frozen, and in order to unfreeze or un-confiscate an account necessitates not only very good legal aid, which is expensive, but actual monetary assets to pay for such. Of even more concern, however, is that a government that has the legal right to freeze or confiscate assets under currently narrowly defined circumstances, probably has the potential to expand those conditions against enemies of the state, or in emergencies of national defense, or basically under any condition that it sees fit, if that government controls the legal as well as policing aspects of that country with an iron fist, for certain governments have a nasty habit, of seizing what isn’t theirs, under dubious circumstances, because money is not only a form of valuable power, but also because the lack of money, allows the government to control far more easily people that annoy them.
So then, those that have lots of assets that they can log into online, to check upon and count, may find themselves in a situation, under trying circumstances, in which, that money as an asset to them, is frozen, not necessarily because the government has taken it, but because of newly developed governmental exigencies, of which that government has put a "temporary" hold on those assets, perhaps to assure that the owner of such, won't abscond to another country, or basically in order to keep those assets within the country, because of, perhaps, a financial crisis which seemingly necessitates such in order for the monetary system to stabilize itself.
On the other hand, those that have money in physical specie, such as gold, have something that has historically held its value as well as also having something of fundamental universal worth as a means to store assets and money.So too, somewhat surprisingly, those that have physical dollar bills, such as $100 bills or other denominations, have money that is relatively stable, which is also universally acceptable, as well as being well-nigh anonymous, and despite whatever financial crisis may come, these owners are aware that the circulation of printed dollar bills, as reported by visualcapitalist.com, demonstrates that "….physical currency makes up only about 11% of the total value," of the dollars in circulation, in which, dollars in hand, in times of blood in the streets, quite obviously have a lot more value than dollars stored in a bank or brokerage account online, especially when the very log-in of the user in question has been seized by the federal government