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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 time…

Tomas Herrera · 16 min read

Mining · 19 August 2026

Nine Grams a Tonne

…gy and water bills, permitting delays and the closure liabilities nobody prices until the mine is already exhausted. · The industry's headline cost figure, all-in sustaining cost, still excludes major items such as exploration for new reserves and initial capital, understating th…

Amara Okonjo · 18 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. ·…

Amara Okonjo · 20 min read

Industry · 6 August 2026

The Scrap Trade

…a quarter to a third of annual gold demand, and its volume responds to price faster than mine output can. · Scrap is priced off spot, adjusted for assayed fineness, then discounted for testing, refining, transport and each intermediary's margin. · High-street payouts commonly la…

Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read

Industry · 28 July 2026

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

…y richer than gold ore? By concentration, frequently yes. Modern underground ore is often mined at grades measured in single-digit grams of gold per tonne, while sorted, high-grade circuit boards can run into the hundreds of grams per tonne. What e-waste lacks is a deposit: the m…

Tomas Herrera · 16 min read

Industry · 2 July 2026

Nine Nines: Inside a Modern Gold Refinery

…bars trade without re-assay in the wholesale market. · Provenance documentation now determines a bar's marketability as much as its fineness. · Recycled scrap is a large and often more profitable feedstock than mined doré, but it demands heavier sorting and compliance work befor…

Tomas Herrera · 19 min read

Industry · 20 August 2026

The Refiner's Ledger

Somewhere between a mine's doré bar and a Good Delivery brick sits a chain of chlorination furnaces, electrolytic cells, assay labs and accreditation committees that decides which gold the world's markets will…

Tomas Herrera · 17 min read

Industry · 4 August 2026

The Gold Inside Your Phone

…ties, yes: a tonne of scrap circuit boards contains far more gold than a tonne of typical mined ore. At household scale it is not economic and the informal chemical methods used to attempt it are genuinely dangerous. · Does a higher gold price reduce electronics demand? Barely, i…

Tomas Herrera · 18 min read

Craft · 5 June 2026

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

…arked 750. The remaining quarter is alloying metal, usually copper and silver, which determines hardness and colour. · Why is pure gold rarely used in jewellery? At 24k gold is soft enough to be marked by a fingernail's pressure over time and deforms out of shape in daily wear. A…

Yusuf Demir · 16 min read

Mining · 22 May 2026

The Other Supply Chain: Artisanal Mining and the Mercury Problem

…— but each shifts risk rather than eliminating it. · Traceability schemes work only where miners can actually access a legal buyer at a fair price. · Women make up a substantial share of the artisanal workforce, concentrated in processing roles that carry their own distinct mercu…

Amara Okonjo · 15 min read

Science · 10 August 2026

Where Gold Actually Comes From

…t all of the gold present when Earth formed sank into the core with the iron; the gold we mine arrived later, in a bombardment known as the late veneer. · Ore is not made by geology delivering gold to one place but by hot water dissolving trace gold from enormous volumes of rock…

Tomas Herrera · 17 min read

Industry · 7 August 2026

How Fake Gold Is Detected

…obvious density mismatches — but it cannot detect a well-made tungsten-cored bar, because acid streak tests and simple electronic testers only sample the surface. A home kit is a useful first filter, not a substitute for an ultrasonic or assay-based check on any high-value purcha…

Tomas Herrera · 16 min read

History · 14 July 2026

The Gold Standard: How a Soft Yellow Metal Became Money

…· Keynes's 'barbarous relic' critique was an argument against subordinating employment to mine output, not a dismissal of gold as a store of value. · Gold rushes and reserve accumulation are two sides of the same demand story: private discovery in the nineteenth century, official…

Marguerite Adler · 14 min read

Markets · 8 September 2026

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

…the past two decades, a trader wanting a view on gold did not need to know anything about mines, refineries or jewellery. It was enough to watch the yield on a ten-year inflation-linked government bond. When that yield fell, the metal rose; when it rose, the metal fell. The relat…

Ingrid Sørensen · 25 min read

Craft · 22 July 2026

Hallmarks and Assay: How Anyone Proves Gold Is Gold

…d into the cupel wall, leaving a bead of gold and silver. The bead is treated with nitric acid to dissolve the silver — the step traditionally called parting — and the remaining gold is weighed. Fineness is the ratio of the final weight to the original. · Its authority comes from…

Yusuf Demir · 15 min read

Markets · 17 August 2026

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

…ud waiting to be discovered. It is the kind of claim that is easy to shout and hard to examine, because it treats a dozen unlike instruments as one thing. A futures contract, an unallocated account at a clearing bank, a share in a physically backed fund and a gold certificate fro…

Ingrid Sørensen · 23 min read

Craft · 3 August 2026

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

…t; logistics capacity into the subcontinent is booked against it; and a monsoon that determines the rural harvest determines, with a lag of a few months, how much of the wedding-season buying actually materialises in the villages where a large share of it happens. · ~50% Share of…

Yusuf Demir · 15 min read

History · 9 August 2026

The Hoard Problem: What Buried Gold Actually Tells Us

…dicators that a hoard was given rather than hidden. · Can you tell where ancient gold was mined? Only approximately. Trace-element profiles and lead isotope ratios can be compared with ore-body signatures, and the technique works best on objects made from a single, freshly refine…

Marguerite Adler · 16 min read

Markets · 6 August 2026

Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again

…aring full gold backing should be treated as rhetorical rather than a description of an imminent, arithmetically feasible policy. · How does the IMF treat gold? The IMF holds one of the world's largest gold reserves and permits member states to include gold in their official rese…

Ingrid Sørensen · 14 min read

Markets · 8 August 2026

Moving Bullion: The Logistics Nobody Prices

…rial: a handful of large refineries process a disproportionate share of the world's newly mined and recycled gold, converting it between the bar formats different regional markets demand. Swiss customs data on gold imports and exports is one of the closest things the market has t…

Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read

Markets · 11 September 2026

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

…world's governments and central banks say they hold — about a fifth of all the gold ever mined, worth at current prices in the region of three trillion dollars. The figure appears in every annual demand report, every central bank speech, every chart of official-sector buying. It…

Ingrid Sørensen · 22 min read

Science · 8 August 2026

The Metal That Went Medical

…? The standard method, the Turkevich synthesis, reduces a boiling solution of chloroauric acid with sodium citrate, which both supplies electrons to form metallic gold and coats the resulting particles with a negative charge that keeps them from clumping. Varying the ratio of cit…

Amara Okonjo · 19 min read

Science · 9 August 2026

The Metallurgy of Karat

…nly reveals itself halfway through the final polish. · These are the properties that determine whether a design can be executed at all, and they are why workshops develop loyalties to particular alloy suppliers that outsiders find inexplicable. Two 18k yellows with identical assa…

Tomas Herrera · 17 min read

Markets · 2 August 2026

Who Actually Sets the Gold Price

…mous volume of contracts needs a defensible reference number: refinery supply agreements, mine hedges, jewellery wholesale terms, fund valuations. What it is not is the place where the price is discovered. Discovery happens continuously, all day, across the London over-the-counte…

Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read

Policies · 6 August 2026

Editorial Standards & Corrections

…gifts · Anyone writing for this publication discloses to the editor any holding in a gold miner, royalty company, refiner, exchange-traded product or dealer that could reasonably be affected by their reporting. Where a holding exists and the assignment proceeds, the interest is d…

Policies · 6 August 2026

Financial Disclaimer

…ot adopted as our own predictions. · 4. Sources and their incentives · We quote refiners, miners, central bankers, traders, analysts and campaigners. Every one of them has an interest. A producer wants a higher gold price; a bullion bank earns on turnover; an NGO needs its findin…

Policies · 6 August 2026

Privacy Policy

…GoldMagazine is an independent editorial publication reporting on gold — its markets, its mines, its metallurgy and the people who work it. This Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal data collected through this website, including every article page, the archive, and any…

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

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