A gold reserve is the gold held by a central bank or nation intended as a store of value and as a guarantee to redeem promises to pay depositors, note holders (e.g., paper money), or trading peers, or to secure a currency.
At the end of 2004, central banks and investment funds held 19% of all above-ground gold as bank reserve assets.
It has been estimated that all the gold mined by the end of 2009 totaled 165,000 tonnes. At a price of US$1900 per troy ounce, reached in September 2011, one tonne of gold has a value of approximately US$61.1 million. The total value of all gold ever mined would exceed US$10.1 trillion at that valuation.
Read more about Gold Reserve: IMF Gold Holdings, Gold Reserves and Their Relevance in War Times (Example From WW II), Officially Reported Gold Holdings, Privately Held Gold, World Gold Holdings
Famous quotes containing the words gold and/or reserve:
“1st Murderer. Where’s thy conscience now?...
2nd Murderer. I’ll not meddle with it. It makes a man a coward.... It fills a man full of obstacles. It made me once restore a purse of gold that by chance I found. It beggars any man that keeps it. It is turned out of towns and cities for a dangerous thing, and every man that means to live well endeavors to trust to himself and live without it.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I do not know what right I have to so much happiness, but rather hold it in reserve till the time of my desert.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)