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Q: Have you visited Fort Knox? BESSENT: I am happy to say, all gold is present and accounted for! The US has the LARGEST pile of gold in the world, over $1 trillion.

The Number You Need To Understand First Before we start, one number puts everything in context. Fort Knox contains 147,341,858 fine troy ounces of gold. At current market prices near $4,000 per ounce, these reserves represent around $600 billion. But at the legal book value of $42.22 per ounce, fixed since 1973, the assets are officially valued at only $6.22 billion on the Treasury’s books. America owns $667 billion worth of gold. But it is recorded on the books at $6 billion. That $660 billion gap is the thread that connects everything that follows. January 2025: The Audit That Was...

This video explores the spectacular remains of the Roman mines at Las Médulas, Spain. The Roman Gold Mine that Ate Mountains | 9:09 toldinstone | 21,693 views | July 10, 2026

Precious metals investors saw their holdings skyrocket in value in 2024 and 2025, which was great news for them, but bad news for some dealers, such as Rosland Capital LLC. Rosland Capital filed for a Chapter 11 liquidation facing distress from declining profitability compounded by an unsustainable order fulfillment model amid record precious metals prices.

Central bank gold statistics: Central banks remain committed to gold PDF 0.24 mb Central banks were back in buying mode in May – and with a little more spring in their step. Based on the latest reported data, official gold reserves increased by a net 41t during the month, with purchases once again concentrated among a familiar cast of buyers (Chart 1). Much of the activity was driven by Poland (18t) and China (10t), with Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan also continuing their monthly net gold buying activity. Singapore also rejoined the list of buyers, reporting a net purchase of 4t, its...

Russia is now "so deeply invested in the Maduro regime that the only realistic option is to double down." Financial Times' Alexander Gabuev says that Rosneft owns two offshore gas fields in Venezuela and holds stakes in assets boasting more than 20 million tonnes of crude. Caracas owes Rosneft USD 3 billion. Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido last month declared himself interim president, winning the backing of the United States. Russia, meanwhile, supported Venezuela’s socialist leader Nicolás Maduro, who has led the oil-rich nation since 2013. The Kremlin is extending help to Maduro while the United States is imposing sanctions...

Costa Rica’s illegal gold mining problem is no longer confined to the long-running Crucitas debate, the Colegio de Geólogos de Costa Rica warned, calling for a national strategy to track gold, strengthen state controls and respond differently to each mining region. The professional association said the country needs a technical plan for gold mining that goes beyond emergency police operations and political arguments over whether to reopen large-scale extraction. Its proposal centers on traceability, tighter regulation of processing plants, stronger oversight by the Dirección de Geología y Minas, and formalization in communities where mining is already a source of family...

The battle over what counts as money — and who gets to control it — just took a dramatic turn. China’s biggest banks are shutting down retail paper gold trading just as gold has pulled back sharply from record highs, signaling that the fight over gold is no longer only about price. It is about market structure, settlement power, and the future of money itself. In June, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China IDCBF -7.31% ▼ , one of the largest banks in the world, said it would stop offering intermediary services for individual precious-metals trading linked to the Shanghai...

There is an increasing amount of chatter regarding a surge in open interest for deeply out-of-the-money options on COMEX gold. Whether or not there's anything substantial behind these speculative trades remains to be seen. COMEX Gold Options Open Interest And Market Speculation Let's start with what we know. Below is a screenshot from the CME website that shows total open interest in call options on Dec26 COMEX gold. As I type, that contract is trading at about $4100, but as you can see, there are a substantial number of open call options from $10,000 to $20,000. For these to be...

Lava. Ash. Horrifying death. All are known and expected outputs from an active volcano. But one volcano deep in the farthest, frozen reaches of our planet marches to the beat of a slightly different drum. On Ross Island in the Ross Sea, a deep bay in Antarctica, Mount Erebus fumes about 1,350 kilometers (840 miles) from the Geographic South Pole. The world's southernmost active volcano, it bubbles with a permanent lake of blazing lava. And in the gas constantly pouring forth from this gate to the underworld, scientists found microscopic particles of crystalline, elemental gold. According to a 1991 research...

"People don't use it to make serious trades, they don't use it to buy their dinner and pay at the supermarket...What it does is allows crooks to move money around..."

In 1995, remarkable contents of a 17th-century shipwreck began to be discovered by divers of the South West Maritime Archaeological Group off Salcombe Bay. The finds consist of over 400 gold coins of the Sa'dian Sharifs of Morocco in addition to ingots, jewellery as well as other items including Dutch pewter and pottery subsequently acquired by the British Museum. Although the ship has not survived, the divers discovered remnants of wood, rope and lead that were parts of its infrastructure. The finds from this shipwreck are significant for several reasons: the gold is clearly a bullion hoard and the number...

Turns out all that glitters is not gold. Selling in the precious metal just keeps getting worse, with the GLD ETF now down 25% from its intraday record in February. Options trading in the fund has turned bearish in a hurry and is now pointing toward further downside. Even after another 3% drop on Wednesday, traders sold more calls than they bought and of the $200 million in options premium traded, $130 million was tied to puts, according to data from ThinkOrSwim and SpotGamma. Of the top 10 contracts traded, eight were puts, and more than half of the put...

The oval-set stone, deep blue in colour, was framed by exquisite filigree: thin gold wires twisted and soldered into spirals, accented with tiny granulated beads.Although the blue "stone" is likely coloured glass rather than sapphire, such materials were prized for their symbolic power -- believed to cool inner heat, preserve chastity, and confer divine protection.With its rich decoration and small size, experts believe the ring once belonged to a woman of high status.The discovery was made during extensive excavations in the Norwegian city of Tønsberg, specifically in Prestegaten and its surrounding streets, where archaeologists from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural...

The late chairman of the Federal Reserve, who died this morning at 100, believed that ‘gold and economic freedom are inseparable.’… … In the strongest terms, Greenspan condemned those who would redistribute national income through fiscal overspending. He deemed it a scheme for the “hidden” confiscation of wealth. “Gold stands in the way of this insidious process,” he wrote. “It stands as a protector of property rights.” In Greenspan’s view, that explained the “almost hysterical antagonism toward gold” among big government statists.… … Here I am proud and grateful to acknowledge that I was considered by Alan Greenspan to be...

When David Lammy addressed the World Gold Council and London Bullion Market Association this week, he intended to warn his audience about illicit gold. Instead, almost accidentally, he explained why so many people own it. “Unlike cash,” he said, gold “ does not need a bank account, a password or an internet connection.” This was meant to sound sinister. To anyone who has ever dealt with a frozen account, a failed payment system, a banking scare, a cyberattack, a currency crisis or the creeping absurdity of modern digital finance, it sounded rather more like a sales pitch. That is the...

Australia's wealthiest person, mining baron Gina Rinehart, has taken a stake of more than $1 billion in the record-setting $75 billion SpaceX (SPCX.O), the Wall Street Journal reported on ​Monday, citing a person familiar with the matter... Hancock is a significant investor in ‌a swathe ⁠of rare earths companies including U.S.-based MP Materials, and Rare Earths Americas (REA.A), and Australia's Lynas Rare Earths (LYC.AX), as well as lithium producer Liontown Resources (LTR.AX), among many others. It bulked up its defence, gold and rare-earths holdings in its $3.3 billion U.S. portfolio this year, filings showed last month... While commending Musk's entrepreneurial...

Iran is increasing its military presence in Venezuela, with officials and personnel, with some members of the country's elite acquiring properties in the Latin American country and being offered political asylum ... The relationship between the two countries has grown over the years, Infobae has detailed, with Iran having established a drone development base at the El Libertador air base in Venezuela, where training for Venezuelan military personnel is also carried out. That project includes the production and training in the use of a wide range of unnamed aerial vehicles (UAV) Among them are the ZAMORA V-1 (Shahed-131), used for...

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — After being told her Social Security funds were supporting terrorism, a widow was directed to buy $700,000 in gold — but an alert store owner intervened before crooks could make off with her money, records show. A young man, who was reportedly sent to Michigan from Illinois to fetch the gold, ended up with a bag of chocolate coins and a pair of 20-year felonies instead. “They didn’t know they were getting chocolate gold coins,” said Ben Soldaat, owner of Grand Rapids Coins, who alerted authorities to the suspected scam in early May. “It just...

On a leafy Connecticut road in the summer of 2024, would-be kidnappers pulled a couple from their Lamborghini SUV, beat them in broad daylight and threw them into a van, only to be arrested shortly thereafter as multiple witnesses, including a passing off-duty FBI agent, called police. The investigation would lead police to some sensational findings. The attack turned out to be linked to a $245 million Bitcoin heist the month before involving the couple’s son. And this week, a California cryptocurrency mogul who authorities say called himself “The Godfather” and had previously hired off-duty sheriff’s deputies to strongarm his...