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In the absence of an explicit regulatory framework, legality can probably only be determined after negative outcomes, unfortunately.

It also seems like without catastrophic retail investment losses, politically there isn‘t much to gain with implementing such a regulation, and potentially much to lose. Reacting too late to prevent harm seems to be the logical outcome.

Like every currency ever in the history of mankind, gold-backed or not.

Important to note that a currency peg is different than a currency. The latter free floats, the former does not.

Not true. Fiat currencies are backed by the consumer of last resort: governments. Everyone has to pay taxes using the official currency of the country. For instance, US$ is backed by approximately 25% of the GDP which the government collects every year in taxes.

well, if people decided to trust them even without the audit, then what's to say that it should be illegal? Investments have always been caveat emptor.

Investments were this way in the 1800s and early 1900s.

A lot of protections have been put into place since then. There's a reason we prosecute Ponzi schemes, offer FDIC and SIPC insurance, stress test banks, etc.