All the gold ever mined. This big.
Seven storeys.
Melt all the gold into one cube and each side is about 22 metres (72 ft): as tall as a seven-storey apartment block.
How long can we keep digging?
45%
Nearly half of all gold is being worn right now. Bars, coins and ETFs hold about another fifth; national vaults hold only about a sixth.
The full breakdown, and your share
Split among 8.2 billion people, that is about 26 grams each, half of a small 50 g bar, worth roughly $3,500 at October 2026’s ~$4,150/oz. All of it together is worth about $29 trillion, roughly one year of US GDP; at January 2026’s peak it was about $39 trillion.
Six thousand years. One winner.
It can’t be made.
Alchemists failed for five centuries: making gold takes the energy of stars. Earth’s crust holds only about 0.004 grams per tonne.
It doesn’t rust.
Pharaohs’ gold masks still look new after 3,300 years. Almost every gram ever mined is still here.
It’s hard to fake.
A density of 19.32, high conductivity, extreme malleability: a full set of tests leaves counterfeits nowhere to hide.
The science behind it
Your gold ring is older than the Sun.
In 2017 we watched a gold factory for the first time: two neutron stars colliding. Models estimate that one collision threw out about 200 Earth massesof gold, billions of billions of times everything humans have ever mined. The gold on Earth was forged before the Sun was lit.
Overnight, $300 billion frozen.
Russia’s central bank had its reserves abroad frozen at a stroke. Every country’s foreign-currency reserves, it turned out, sat under someone else’s roof.
From that day, central banks wanted one thing: to bring their gold home. Kept in your own vault, it is the one reserve no one else can freeze.
Since then, central banks only buy.
2022–2024: over 1,000 tonnes three years running, a first since records began in 1950. 2025: 863 tonnes, still almost double the twelve years before.
These buyers barely look at the price. What they are buying isn’t a return. It is something that can’t be frozen.
Who is bringing gold home?
India raised the share it keeps at home from 38% (2023) to about 77% (early 2026), including 100 tonnes moved back from the Bank of England in 2024.
Poland was the world’s largest buyer in 2024 and 2025 (net +102 t in 2025), and in January 2026 approved another 150 tonnes, aiming for 700.
The trend: in World Gold Council surveys, the share of central banks that want gold in domestic vaults rose from 50% (2020) to 68% (2023); 95% expect global official reserves to keep rising (2025, a record).
55 years. 118 times.
In 1971 the dollar left gold at $35. On 26 January 2026 gold passed $5,000 for the first time, peaking at $5,602. Today it is about $4,150.
3.5% vs 13.2%.
Same asset, answers almost four times apart. The whole difference is the day you bought.
All six entry points, compared
Vermilion = bought at a historic peak; ink = other entry points. Annual return = ($4,150 in Oct 2026 ÷ entry price)^(1/years) − 1, nominal USD, before holding costs. Source: LBMA market data.
Gold doesn’t answer “will it rise next year?” It answers “when did you buy?”
All the gold humans have: one cube, 22 metres a side. And the most powerful countries are queuing to move it home.
Sources and notes
- World Gold Council (WGC) Goldhub: above-ground stock of 216,265 t and its breakdown (end of 2024); 3,661 t mined in 2024; central bank purchases 2010–2025. gold.org/goldhub
- WGC, Gold Demand Trends and Central Bank Gold Reserves Survey: 2010–2021 average of about 473 t; record 95% / 43% survey readings; 68% of central banks favouring domestic storage.
- USGS, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025: economically recoverable reserves of about 59,000 t.
- World Steel Association, World Steel in Figures 2025: 1.885 billion tonnes of crude steel in 2024.
- LBMA / BullionVault / goldprice.org (Oct 2026): about $4,150/oz.
- CFR, European Parliamentary Research Service, Xinhua / China Daily: about $300 billion of Russian central bank assets frozen in Feb 2022; Bundesbank repatriated 674 t in 2013–2017; Reserve Bank of India moved 100 t from the UK in 2024.
- Kasen, D., Metzger, B. et al., Nature 551 (2017); LIGO/Virgo (GW170817): about 200 Earth masses of gold from one merger (model estimate, with a wide error range).
- CCTV Finance (2026-01-28), The Paper (2026-01-26): gold first passes $5,000; record high of $5,602.
- Returns: entry prices are representative levels for each year (1980/2011 peaks, 1999/2015 lows, around year-end 2000/2020), nominal USD, before holding costs; annual return = ($4,150 ÷ entry)^(1/years) − 1.
Some long-run totals are standard industry estimates (marked “about”). This page explains data and is not investment advice. Data as of October 2026.