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20 results for “Reserves vs resources”
Mining · 5 August 2026
Grade, Cut-off and the Arithmetic of an Open Pit
…oved per ore tonne — is often the difference between a viable pit and an abandoned one. · Reserves are the economically mineable subset of resources under a stated price assumption, and they are restated every year. · All-in sustaining cost excludes the capital that built the min…
Amara Okonjo · 16 min read
Markets · 20 June 2026
Bring It Home: Central Banks and the Great Gold Repatriation
…y. · Repatriation is driven less by distrust of custodians than by the demonstration that reserves can be immobilised. · Bringing gold home imposes real costs: vault construction, insurance, audit and lost liquidity. · The trend interacts with sustained official-sector buying, ti…
Ingrid Sørensen · 13 min read
Markets · 6 August 2026
Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again
…by emerging-market reserve managers rebuilding a domestically held, unencumbered share of reserves. · Gold's appeal to a reserve manager is that it carries no counterparty: it cannot be frozen by the issuer of another country's liability. · Central banks are price-insensitive, sl…
Ingrid Sørensen · 17 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 · 12 min read
Markets · 8 August 2026
Moving Bullion: The Logistics Nobody Prices
Between the vault and the buyer sits an industry of armoured vehicles, sealed cargo, bonded warehouses and insurance clauses. It rarely makes news, and it is the reason a spot price in London can dive…
Ingrid Sørensen · 17 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 · 16 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 · 16 min read
Industry · 7 August 2026
How Fake Gold Is Detected
…st takes under a minute and costs a fraction of an assay. · 19.32 / 19.25 Density of gold vs tungsten (g/cm³) 3,240 / 5,180 Sound velocity, gold vs tungsten (m/s) ~30 µm Practical XRF sampling depth in gold ±0.01 mm Dimensional tolerance a modern mint holds · Coins are a differen…
Tomas Herrera · 15 min read
History · 14 July 2026
The Gold Standard: How a Soft Yellow Metal Became Money
…eversed. Reserve managers in emerging economies — for whom the sanctionability of foreign reserves is not a theoretical concern — have been steady buyers, and the composition of global reserves has shifted accordingly. · What a modern gold standard would require · A credible comm…
Marguerite Adler · 14 min read
Industry · 2 July 2026
Nine Nines: Inside a Modern Gold Refinery
…reference materials. · For everything else — coins, bars, jewellery alloys, central bank reserves — four nines is the end of the road, and it is close enough to the theoretical ideal that the remaining 0.01 per cent is mostly a rounding error in trace silver. The refinery's real…
Tomas Herrera · 12 min read
Industry · 4 August 2026
The Gold Inside Your Phone
…market is usually described in two halves: jewellery on one side, investment and official reserves on the other. Between them sits a third category that rarely gets a paragraph, because it involves quantities too small to photograph and applications too dull to romanticise. Techn…
Tomas Herrera · 15 min read
Markets · 2 August 2026
Who Actually Sets the Gold Price
…· Central banks and ETF flows move the price in opposite directions on different clocks: reserves are slow and price-insensitive, funds are fast and price-chasing. · Is there one official gold price? No. The number quoted in the press is usually the spot price for unallocated go…
Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read
Industry · 7 August 2026
After the Cyanide
Every ounce of mined gold leaves behind roughly a tonne of processed rock and the water that carried it. What happens to that material after the last shift is the part of the industry with the longest…
Tomas Herrera · 17 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 · 11 min read
History · 9 August 2026
The Hoard Problem: What Buried Gold Actually Tells Us
A field of gold torcs and coins is a spectacular find and a treacherous document. The people who buried it were not writing to us, and the reasons they had for putting it in the ground are exactly wha…
Marguerite Adler · 16 min read
Science · 8 August 2026
The Metal That Went Medical
Divide gold finely enough and it stops being gold-coloured, stops being inert in the way you expect, and starts doing work in places no bullion bar could reach — including the test strip that told you…
Amara Okonjo · 15 min read
Mining · 22 May 2026
The Other Supply Chain: Artisanal Mining and the Mercury Problem
A significant share of the world's gold is produced by people working with hand tools, informal finance and a neurotoxin. Formalisation is the stated solution. Nobody agrees on what it costs. · Artisa…
Amara Okonjo · 12 min read
Industry · 6 August 2026
The Scrap Trade
Roughly a quarter of the world's annual gold supply has been gold before. It arrives as broken chains, single earrings and dental crowns, and it moves through a chain of intermediaries that most selle…
Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read
Industry · 28 July 2026
Urban Mining: The Richest Gold Ore on Earth Is in Your Old Phone
A tonne of good underground ore holds a few grams of gold. A tonne of discarded circuit boards can hold two hundred. So why is most of it still going into landfill? · Concentration, not tonnage, is wh…
Tomas Herrera · 13 min read
Science · 10 August 2026
Where Gold Actually Comes From
Every gram of gold on Earth was manufactured in an astrophysical catastrophe, arrived here after the planet had already formed, and was then concentrated by hot water. Three separate accidents, none o…
Tomas Herrera · 18 min read
