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Industry · 2 July 2026

Nine Nines: Inside a Modern Gold Refinery

…chnology is medieval and the tolerance is a part in ten thousand. Chief assayer, European refinery, speaking on background · The pour. By this stage the metal has passed chlorination and electrolysis; the only remaining variable is the cast. A refinery worker pouring molten gold…

Tomas Herrera · 12 min read

Markets · 8 August 2026

Moving Bullion: The Logistics Nobody Prices

…le, commentators reach for conspiracy, and the true explanation is usually a warehouse, a refinery shift roster and an aircraft. · Custody: who actually owns the bar · The first distinction in bullion logistics is legal rather than physical. Allocated metal consists of specific b…

Ingrid Sørensen · 17 min read

Industry · 28 July 2026

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

…g the most toxic residues. · Recycled metal already supplies a meaningful share of annual refinery feed and is the only supply source that responds quickly to price. · Miniaturisation cuts gold per device but raises the difficulty of separating it, so recovery rates are not autom…

Tomas Herrera · 13 min read

Industry · 7 August 2026

How Fake Gold Is Detected

…r than XRF. Fire assay: destructive, definitive, and reserved for settlement disputes and refinery intake. · A working authentication bench. The cheap instruments do most of the volume; the expensive ones exist to catch what the cheap ones structurally cannot see. Calipers, an ul…

Tomas Herrera · 15 min read

Mining · 22 May 2026

The Other Supply Chain: Artisanal Mining and the Mercury Problem

…l one. Remove any of the three and the chain breaks at that link. · Traceability from the refinery end · Downstream, the pressure is real. Refiners face due-diligence expectations, jewellery brands face consumer and regulatory scrutiny, and an accredited refiner risks accreditati…

Amara Okonjo · 12 min read

Mining · 5 August 2026

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

…or conventional carbon-in-leach circuits 1–2 yrs Time from ore in the pit to metal at the refinery, including stockpiles · Cut-off grade: where accounting becomes geology · Every tonne coming out of the pit is assigned to one of two destinations. If the value of the recoverable m…

Amara Okonjo · 16 min read

Markets · 2 August 2026

Who Actually Sets the Gold Price

…hmark exists because an enormous 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, acros…

Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read

Policies · 6 August 2026

Editorial Standards & Corrections

…s we cover. Site visits are paid for by the publication. Where physical access to a mine, refinery or vault can only be arranged through the operator — which is frequently the case, since these are secure industrial sites — the piece states who arranged access and who paid for it…

Policies · 6 August 2026

Financial Disclaimer

…rwise is being straight with you. · Data drawn from third parties — exchange settlements, refinery statistics, reserve disclosures, company filings — is reproduced in good faith and is only as reliable as its source. Where a figure is disputed, contested or subject to later revis…

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 · 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

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

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

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

Industry · 4 August 2026

The Gold Inside Your Phone

Industrial demand is the quietest third of the gold market: a few tenths of a gram per handset, multiplied by billions of devices, chosen not for prestige but because nothing else conducts as reliably…

Tomas Herrera · 15 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

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

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

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

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 · 17 min read