I didn't exclusively said it was a hack (and no my friend doesn't buy gold or power leveling), and more importantly I'm just curious about what might actually be happening. When someone posts the exact same thing that my friend described I feel like this missing gold phenomenon is more than just something random. He's submitted a post on the private forum to the admins, and I mostly just want to see if an answer could be found.
I'd rather know if it is some dumb bug or something else so it can either be fixed and/or addressed. I'd like to save up money for my epic mount knowing that one day a coding error won't erase my money with no chance at getting it back (or whatever the problem may be).