After a quest where my character was the gold collector, I tried to put the gold collected on the ground at his feet.
My character walked involuntarily a few steps beside a nearby tree, and made the putting it down motion.
However, there was no object on the ground so the gold was lost.
Another character tried to put a smaller amount of gold on the ground at the same time, and it was lost.
About 1 minute after, I put a 3 gold down and it worked normally.
Have it screenied if it matters.
This has happened to me before. Best fix is to not put gold on the ground, just barter everyone their share.