Question: How much gold is in the entire world?
Answer: Thomson Reuters GFMS (Gold Field Mining Services) produces an annual survey of the world’s gold estimates. Last year’s figure for all the gold in the world was 171,300 metric tons. If it were all gathered in one place and melted down, it could form a cube 68ft on each side. If you shipped that cube to our refinery (remember, no job is too large or small for us!) your payout would be in the neighborhood of $6,694,414,604,000 – a few trillion less than the GDP of China.
Speaking of China, that’s one of the reasons why worldwide gold estimates vary. Many countries (such as China and Switzerland) don’t fully reveal the size of their gold reserves. Other factors include gold mined during pre-history, illegal mining operations, undiscovered treasure, and differing mining efficiencies.
Depending on who you ask, you’ll get estimates ranging from 155,244 tons to as much as a whopping 2.5 million tons – which totals to about a mind-blowing $97,702,433,923,000. That’s more than six times the GDP of the United States!
Those estimates only account for the amount of mined gold. According to the US Geological Survey, there is still approximately 52,000 tons (about $2,032,210,625,000 worth) of gold still left to be mined, with more likely to be discovered. And since nearly all of the world’s gold is continuously recycled, estimates aren’t likely to decrease for a long time.
