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Mining · 22 May 2026

The Other Supply Chain: Artisanal Mining and the Mercury Problem

…and a neurotoxin. Formalisation is the stated solution. Nobody agrees on what it costs. · Artisanal and small-scale mining employs millions and is the largest source of anthropogenic mercury emissions. · Mercury amalgamation persists because it is cheap, fast and requires no capi…

Amara Okonjo · 15 min read

Industry · 20 August 2026

The Refiner's Ledger

…through its supply chain, identify red flags such as sourcing from armed-group-controlled mining areas or the use of intermediaries with no verifiable operations, and refuse or investigate further any material that cannot be adequately traced. Independent third-party auditors per…

Tomas Herrera · 17 min read

Industry · 28 July 2026

Urban Mining: The Richest Gold Ore on Earth Is in Your Old Phone

…t tonnage, is what makes an ore economic — and e-waste is extraordinarily concentrated by mining standards. · The bottleneck is collection and logistics, not metallurgy; the chemistry has been solved for decades. · Informal backyard recovery captures a fraction of the gold while…

Tomas Herrera · 16 min read

Mining · 5 August 2026

Grade, Cut-off and the Arithmetic of an Open Pit

…— ventilation, ground support, vertical haulage — costs far more per tonne than open-pit mining, so a deposit generally needs several grams per tonne or more to cover that cost. Open pits can work profitably on sub-two-gram ore because moving rock along a ramp is comparatively c…

Amara Okonjo · 20 min read

Mining · 19 August 2026

Nine Grams a Tonne

…to reach it. · What is all-in sustaining cost (AISC) and why does it matter? AISC is the mining industry's standardised measure, adopted from World Gold Council guidance, of the cost to produce and sell an ounce of gold from an operating mine, including cash operating costs, sus…

Amara Okonjo · 18 min read

Industry · 7 August 2026

After the Cyanide

…ontinue for centuries, which makes it the single largest long-term liability in hard-rock mining. · Why do tailings dams fail? Most failures trace to construction method, water management or foundation conditions rather than to a single dramatic event. Upstream-raised dams, built…

Tomas Herrera · 16 min read

Science · 8 August 2026

The Metal That Went Medical

…virus. · Gold nanoparticles are red because collective electron oscillations — surface plasmons — absorb green light at around 520 nanometres. · The colour is size-dependent and aggregation-sensitive, which is what makes the particles usable as a readout rather than just a pigme…

Amara Okonjo · 19 min read

Industry · 2 July 2026

Nine Nines: Inside a Modern Gold Refinery

…ength, ongoing proficiency testing against umpire samples, and a sourcing and responsible-mining policy that is independently audited on a cycle of years, not once at entry. A refiner that cuts corners on any of the three loses the accreditation that makes its bars fungible acros…

Tomas Herrera · 19 min read

Science · 10 August 2026

Where Gold Actually Comes From

…. · A 'rich' deposit is still roughly one part gold to a million parts rock, which is why mining is an exercise in moving overburden rather than collecting treasure. · Is it true that all gold comes from exploding stars? Broadly, yes — but not from ordinary supernovae alone. Gold…

Tomas Herrera · 17 min read

Industry · 4 August 2026

The Gold Inside Your Phone

…decade mission life without the possibility of manual intervention. · The ethics of urban mining · The rise of 'urban mining' — the recovery of gold and other metals from electronic waste — has brought new focus to the ethical and environmental standards of the recycling industry…

Tomas Herrera · 18 min read

History · 14 July 2026

The Gold Standard: How a Soft Yellow Metal Became Money

…dful of alluvial finds to tens of thousands of migrants within a season, to an industrial mining sector within a decade, to a permanently altered regional economy. · The immediate economic effect was inflationary and global. The mid-century Californian and Australian rushes rough…

Marguerite Adler · 14 min read

Policies · 6 August 2026

Terms of Use

…· Present our reporting in a way that suggests we endorse a product, an issuer, a fund, a mining venture or a trading service. · Interfere with the security of the site, attempt to gain unauthorised access to any system, or introduce malicious code. · 4. Intellectual property · A…

Industry · 6 August 2026

The Scrap Trade

…y of the scrap trade mirrors the geography of gold ownership rather than the geography of mining. India, the Middle East, Turkey and East Asia — regions with deep cultural traditions of holding wealth in jewellery — supply the largest volumes, because households there hold gold i…

Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read

Markets · 6 August 2026

Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again

…two explanations that dominate popular commentary, inflation fear and speculative enthusiasm, neither of which describes how a reserve manager actually thinks. · What a reserve portfolio is for · A central bank's foreign reserves are not an investment fund. Their purpose is to l…

Ingrid Sørensen · 14 min read

Policies · 6 August 2026

Financial Disclaimer

…nother currency bears an exchange-rate exposure that can dominate the metal's own move. · Mining equities are not bullion: producers carry operational, geological, labour, permitting, expropriation, tax and hedging risk. A producer's shares can fall in a rising gold market and ha…

Markets · 8 August 2026

Moving Bullion: The Logistics Nobody Prices

…supply-chain due-diligence programmes explicitly modelled on frameworks developed for the mining industry, tracing gold back towards its mine of origin to exclude material linked to armed conflict or serious human-rights abuses. The practical effect on logistics is significant: a…

Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read

History · 9 August 2026

The Hoard Problem: What Buried Gold Actually Tells Us

…up inclusions distinguish alluvial metal, recovered from river gravels, from metal won by mining a vein. · The complication is recycling. Gold has been remelted continuously for five thousand years, and every melt blends sources and blurs the signal. A coin struck in one century…

Marguerite Adler · 16 min read

Markets · 11 September 2026

The Last Audit: What We Actually Know About the World's Official Gold

…ok like · Strip away the politics and the exercise is not exotic. Private bullion vaults, mining companies and ETF custodians already run programmes that combine the elements a sovereign holder would need, and none of the individual components requires new technology, new treatie…

Ingrid Sørensen · 22 min read

Markets · 8 September 2026

The Real-Rate Trade: Why Gold Moves When Bond Yields Do

…f 'Commercials' is also vital for a complete view of the market. These are the producers (mining companies) and merchants (bullion banks) who typically hold net short positions to hedge their physical inventory. When Commercials reduce their short position to unusually low levels…

Ingrid Sørensen · 25 min read

Markets · 18 August 2026

The Vault Beneath the City

…old’s most underrated logistical asset: you can store the entire annual output of a major mining nation in a space no larger than a garden shed. It is this concentration of value that makes the architecture of the vault possible. When you are guarding billions of dollars of value…

Ingrid Sørensen · 22 min read

Policies · 6 August 2026

Editorial Standards & Corrections

…material so that there is as little to disclose as possible. Whistleblowers in refining, mining and bullion banking are encouraged to make contact through channels they control, from equipment that is not their employer's. · Practically, that means we keep contact records apart…

Markets · 20 June 2026

Bring It Home: Central Banks and the Great Gold Repatriation

For half a century it was rational to store your gold in someone else's basement. Then the calculus of counterparty risk changed, and reserve managers started chartering aircraft. · Overseas custody w…

Ingrid Sørensen · 14 min read

Craft · 22 July 2026

Hallmarks and Assay: How Anyone Proves Gold Is Gold

A hallmark is one of the oldest consumer protection technologies in continuous use. It is also, on close inspection, a small masterpiece of institutional design — and it is being quietly eroded. · A h…

Yusuf Demir · 15 min read

Industry · 7 August 2026

How Fake Gold Is Detected

Counterfeiting gold is not about making something that looks right. It is about defeating a specific test, and the industry's defences are an escalating conversation between forgers and instruments. ·…

Tomas Herrera · 16 min read

Markets · 17 August 2026

Paper Gold: What You Own When You Do Not Own Bars

Most of the world's gold exposure is a contract, not a metal. Futures, unallocated accounts and exchange-traded funds each promise gold in a different way — and the differences only become visible whe…

Ingrid Sørensen · 23 min read

Craft · 5 June 2026

The Alchemy of Craft: What Goldsmiths Know That Machines Don't

Gold's working properties are so extreme they border on the absurd — one gram drawn into three kilometres of wire. Inside a trade where the tools have barely changed and the hands are irreplaceable. ·…

Yusuf Demir · 16 min read

Science · 9 August 2026

The Metallurgy of Karat

Pure gold is too soft to hold a stone, too soft to hold an edge, and the wrong colour for half the world's taste. Almost everything you own that is gold is a designed alloy — and the design is where t…

Tomas Herrera · 17 min read

Craft · 3 August 2026

The Wedding-Season Bid: How Jewellery Demand Sets the Floor

Half the world's gold is worn, not stored. In India and China that distinction barely exists — and the buying behaviour it produces is the most reliably contrarian force in the entire market. · Jewell…

Yusuf Demir · 15 min read

Markets · 2 August 2026

Who Actually Sets the Gold Price

There is no single gold price. There is a London settlement number, a New York futures curve, a Shanghai premium and a jeweller's counter in Dubai — and the distance between them is where the market l…

Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read

Policies · 6 August 2026

Privacy Policy

…itorial desk. · This policy applies only to this website. Where an article links out to a mining company filing, a central bank statistical release, an exchange rulebook or a third-party research paper, that destination is governed by its own privacy practices, which we neither c…