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Industry · 7 August 2026

How Fake Gold Is Detected

…is within a fraction of a percent of gold's, defeating simple weight-and-volume checks. · XRF is fast, non-destructive and reads only the outer tens of microns — it validates surface composition, never the interior. · Ultrasonic velocity testing is the standard front-line defence…

Tomas Herrera · 16 min read

Craft · 22 July 2026

Hallmarks and Assay: How Anyone Proves Gold Is Gold

…party — not weight, value, age or craftsmanship. · Fire assay remains the referee method; XRF is fast and non-destructive but reads only the surface. · Karat and fineness describe the same thing on different scales: 18ct is 750 parts per thousand gold. · Plating, filling and surf…

Yusuf Demir · 15 min read

Industry · 6 August 2026

The Scrap Trade

…the contained gold; specialist refiners buying in volume pay far closer to it. · Handheld XRF reads the surface only, which is why plated and filled items are caught by density checks, file tests or a destructive assay. · Recycled gold is chemically identical to mined gold after…

Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read

Industry · 2 July 2026

Nine Nines: Inside a Modern Gold Refinery

…st as carefully as mine-of-origin certificates for newly mined doré. · How do fire assay, XRF and ICP spectrometry differ in practice? XRF gives a fast, non-destructive surface reading used mainly for in-process monitoring; ICP spectrometry dissolves a sample to quantify trace im…

Tomas Herrera · 19 min read

History · 9 August 2026

The Hoard Problem: What Buried Gold Actually Tells Us

…t badly; the newest coin gives a terminus post quem, not a cause. · Chemical and isotopic analysis can now tie ancient gold to broad source regions, but recycling has thoroughly mixed the record. · Legal frameworks that reward reporting — rather than punishing finders — recover m…

Marguerite Adler · 16 min read

Markets · 17 August 2026

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

…mend products, take positions or receive payment from issuers, dealers or custodians. All analysis is based on public exchange rules and custodial prospectuses as of the date of publication. · Structured notes and gold-linked products · A step further from allocated metal sit str…

Ingrid Sørensen · 23 min read

Industry · 4 August 2026

The Gold Inside Your Phone

…usands of independent engineering decisions converging on the same conclusion. · Teardown analysis — independent labs strip representative devices and assay component-level gold content, the primary data source for the sector. Refiner intake data — specialist e-waste refiners rep…

Tomas Herrera · 18 min read

Markets · 8 September 2026

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

…st rate. For an entire generation of market participants, this was the bedrock of bullion analysis, providing a clear and reliable signal in an otherwise noisy financial landscape. · That slide is now out of date. Between 2022 and the middle of this decade real yields climbed to…

Ingrid Sørensen · 25 min read

Craft · 5 June 2026

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

…. · The technique was effectively lost and reconstructed in the twentieth century through analysis of surviving pieces and patient experiment. It remains the sternest test of temperature control in the trade: the window between a sound bond and a puddle of collapsed granules is m…

Yusuf Demir · 16 min read

Markets · 11 September 2026

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

…icial reserve statistics as reported, not verified, and be appropriately sceptical of any analysis that treats the second decimal place as meaningful. Second, the distinction that matters — allocated, identified bars versus claims on gold — applies with even more force to private…

Ingrid Sørensen · 22 min read

Science · 9 August 2026

The Metallurgy of Karat

…own in seconds without marking the item. They share the touchstone's blind spot, however: XRF reads only a few microns into the surface, so a heavily gold-plated base-metal item can return a reading indistinguishable from solid gold unless the operator knows to check density or f…

Tomas Herrera · 17 min read

Industry · 20 August 2026

The Refiner's Ledger

…apid non-destructive screening, inductively coupled plasma spectrometry for trace-element analysis — but fire assay remains the method trusted to settle disputes, because its underlying chemistry has not fundamentally changed since it was refined by medieval and early-modern assa…

Tomas Herrera · 17 min read

Markets · 2 August 2026

Who Actually Sets the Gold Price

…e a market-structure reporter, not a chartist · None of this is an argument for technical analysis, which this publication treats with scepticism. It is an argument for reading price moves alongside their plumbing rather than in isolation. A reader who notices a widening EFP, a s…

Ingrid Sørensen · 16 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 · 16 min read

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

Mining · 5 August 2026

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

A gold mine is not a hole with gold in it. It is a spreadsheet with a hole attached — and the single number that decides which rock is ore and which rock is waste moves every time the price does. · Mo…

Amara Okonjo · 20 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 · 15 min read

Mining · 19 August 2026

Nine Grams a Tonne

What does it actually cost to pull an ounce of gold out of the ground? The honest answer runs through grade decline, energy and water bills, permitting delays and the closure liabilities nobody prices…

Amara Okonjo · 18 min read

History · 14 July 2026

The Gold Standard: How a Soft Yellow Metal Became Money

For roughly five thousand years, humanity kept returning to the same element to settle its debts. The story is less about greed than about the unusually boring chemistry of atomic number 79. · Gold's…

Marguerite Adler · 14 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 · 19 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 · 15 min read

Markets · 18 August 2026

The Vault Beneath the City

Beneath the Bank of England and beneath lower Manhattan sit two of the largest concentrations of monetary gold on earth, moved between anonymous compartments by a handful of porters who never touch th…

Ingrid Sørensen · 22 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

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 · 16 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 · 17 min read

Markets · 6 August 2026

Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again

For three decades official institutions were net sellers of bullion, and the policy consensus treated the metal as a museum piece. Then, quietly, the world's reserve managers reversed. The reasons are…

Ingrid Sørensen · 14 min read

Policies · 6 August 2026

Financial Disclaimer

…are adjusted for inflation, because those three choices decide the conclusion before any analysis begins. · Past performance, however presented, is not a guide to future returns. A metal that has held value across five centuries has also spent whole decades disappointing the peo…