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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 · 17 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 · 16 min read

Industry · 4 August 2026

The Gold Inside Your Phone

…nce stays stable for decades. · Substitution is real and mostly already happened — copper bonding wire displaced gold across high-volume packaging years ago. · Industrial demand is price-inelastic in the short run because gold is a tiny fraction of a device's bill of materials. ·…

Tomas Herrera · 15 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. · What is a doré bar? A doré bar is the semi-pure alloy poured at a mine site, typically 70–90 per cent gold with silver and base-metal i…

Tomas Herrera · 12 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 · 13 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. · What is artisanal and small-scale gold mining? ASGM refers to mining carried out by individuals or small groups using low-mechanis…

Amara Okonjo · 12 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 · 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 · 18 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 diverge from a bar in New York. · Allocated custody means specific numbered bar…

Ingrid Sørensen · 17 min read

Markets · 6 August 2026

Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again

…no interest? Because a reserve portfolio is insurance, not an income strategy. Government bonds pay a yield but are somebody else's liability and can be frozen, redenominated or defaulted on. Gold pays nothing and cannot be created by anyone, which is exactly the property a reser…

Ingrid Sørensen · 17 min read

Policies · 6 August 2026

Editorial Standards & Corrections

…rces · The confidentiality of a source who has been promised it is absolute. We resist disclosure demands by every lawful means available, and we design our handling of sensitive material so that there is as little to disclose as possible. Whistleblowers in refining, mining and b…

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 · 11 min read

History · 14 July 2026

The Gold Standard: How a Soft Yellow Metal Became Money

….3 g/cm³ Density — nearly twice that of lead ~212,000 t Estimated above-ground stock ever mined 1971 Suspension of dollar–gold convertibility · Bretton Woods: gold at one remove · The system negotiated at Bretton Woods in July 1944 was a compromise between the discipline of gold…

Marguerite Adler · 14 min read

Markets · 2 August 2026

Who Actually Sets the Gold Price

…f turning it into something else — a coin, a wire, a futures contract, a bar sitting in a bonded warehouse in Hong Kong. · London: the market that is not an exchange · The centre of the wholesale gold market is not a trading floor. It is a network of banks, brokers and vault oper…

Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read

Policies · 6 August 2026

Financial Disclaimer

…ublication printed on the page. Markets move; official statistics are revised; company disclosures are restated. We do not retrospectively update figures inside a published article, because doing so would falsify the record. Where a revision matters, we append a dated update note…

Craft · 22 July 2026

Hallmarks and Assay: How Anyone Proves Gold Is Gold

…ross Europe. The alloy is an engineering decision, and the fineness mark is the honest disclosure of it. · 999.9 Four-nines fineness — refining's practical ceiling 750 18 karat — the standard fine jewellery alloy 585 14 karat — the durable everyday standard 375 9 karat — legal as…

Yusuf Demir · 12 min read

Industry · 7 August 2026

How Fake Gold Is Detected

…ains everything about how authentication has developed. Each defence closed a route; each closure pushed forgers towards a harder and more expensive one. The current state of play is an equilibrium in which sophisticated fakes are technically possible and economically marginal. ·…

Tomas Herrera · 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

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 · 16 min read

Science · 8 August 2026

The Metal That Went Medical

…as labels and both are cheaper per unit. Gold persists because of surface chemistry. The bond between sulphur and a gold surface is strong, forms spontaneously from solution, and orients molecules predictably — which means any biological molecule that can be given a thiol group…

Amara Okonjo · 15 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 · 16 min read

Policies · 6 August 2026

Cookie Policy

…ritten out in prose because a cookie inventory that only a developer can read is not a disclosure. Every item listed is first-party unless the row says otherwise. · Session identifier — strictly necessary, no personal data, cleared when you close the browser tab. It exists so tha…

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 · 13 min read