While headlines chase tariffs, sanctions, and the next skirmish in the Middle East, central banks around the world are doing something far quieter and more telling. They are buying gold at roughly four times the pre-2022 pace and shifting physical bars out of New York.
Goldman Sachs estimates that central banks purchased 79 tonnes in August alone, against a pre-2022 monthly average of just 17 tonnes. On a three-month seasonally adjusted basis the run rate sits near 85 tonnes a month. China accounted for the largest identifiable slice at roughly 25 tonnes that month, and its People’s Bank of China has now reported additions for 23 consecutive months.
Official Chinese holdings reached about 2,410 tonnes by the end of September, or roughly 8.5 percent of its foreign-exchange reserves. Private Chinese imports have also surged past 1,000 tonnes in the first eight months of the year.
ZeroHedge noted the same Goldman figures and the obvious gap between what Beijing reports and what market analysts believe it actually accumulates. The motivations Goldman cites are straightforward: diversification away from G7 reserve currencies, above all the U.S. dollar, amid wars, tariff fights, and the memory of frozen Russian assets. Those incentives “are likely to remain in place,” the bank wrote.
China remains underweight relative to plausible long-term allocations, so the buying is not finished.
Where the Gold Sleeps Matters More Than How Much They Buy
For many European central banks the debate is no longer volume. It is custody. In September the Dutch central bank confirmed it had spent the prior six months moving 86 tonnes of gold out of New York and Ottawa into London.
De Nederlandsche Bank said the decision was driven by “increasing geopolitical unrest” and the desire to be “better prepared for serious crises.” Gold held at the Bank of England, the bank explained, is the most easily tradable in the world and therefore the fastest to deploy when markets seize.
“Gold stored in London at the Bank of England is considered the most easily tradable gold in the world. This makes it the fastest way for DNB to deploy in a crisis situation. The part of the gold stock located in New York and Ottawa is less directly deployable.”
France completed a similar shift earlier. The Banque de France sold 129 tonnes held in New York (about 5 percent of its total) and replaced it with higher-purity bars stored in Europe. It framed the move around purity standards rather than geopolitics, but the net effect was the same: less metal under American roofs. Goldman data showed foreign official holdings at the New York Fed falling 40 tonnes in August while Bank of England custody rose 46 tonnes.
Surveys of reserve managers reveal rising secrecy—more central banks simply decline to say where their gold sits, and a larger share report diversifying overseas or domestic storage.
Europe once shipped gold to the United States for safekeeping during World War II. The current reverse flow reflects a different calculation. Trust in cross-border custody is thinner when sanctions, asset freezes, and political risk are real tools of statecraft.
Gold held inside one’s own jurisdiction or in the deepest, most liquid market carries no counterparty risk. That is the point Chinese analysts keep making, and it is the point European vault managers are now acting on.
The Dollar’s Quiet Contest
None of this is a sudden panic. Domestic central banks in advanced economies already hold large historical stocks and have mostly stayed on the sidelines for fresh buying. Emerging-market and non-aligned buyers have driven the surge since the freezing of Russian reserves.
The result is a slow, structural bid under the gold price even when rates rise and speculative positioning thins. Goldman and others continue to treat official-sector demand as the primary long-term support for the metal.
Human treasuries rise and fall. Currencies are politicized. Vaults change hands. The metal itself does not care which flag flies above the building that stores it. Central banks understand the practical version of that truth: when trust in paper claims weakens, physical gold becomes the asset that cannot be frozen by a rival capital with a phone call. They are acting on it, quietly, tonne by tonne.
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