Central Banks Are Moving Gold Out of the US — Quietly
Central banks are buying gold at four times the normal rate and moving it out of American vaults faster than at any point in recent memory. What they're not saying about where it's going matters more than the purchases themselves.
The Gold Flight No One Is Talking About
Central banks are buying gold at roughly four times their pre-2022 pace and quietly relocating it out of American custody. Goldman Sachs estimated that global central bank purchases hit 79 tonnes in August alone, compared to a pre-Ukraine war average of 17 tonnes per month. On a three-month seasonally adjusted basis, that figure ran even higher at 85 tonnes per month.
But the headline number — the sheer volume of gold being bought — is almost secondary to what’s happening underneath it. Central banks are moving their metal. They’re moving it out of New York and Ottawa. They’re moving it toward London and home vaults. And increasingly, they’re refusing to say where it is.
Why the Netherlands Made the Move Public
In September, De Nederlandsche Bank confirmed it had spent the previous six months reallocating 86 tonnes of gold out of New York and Ottawa and into London. The official language was careful — the bank cited a desire to improve the “tradability” of its Dutch gold and stated the move made it “better prepared for serious crises.”
But the subtext was unmistakable. DNB wrote that gold stored at the Bank of England “is considered the most easily tradable gold in the world” and that the parts of its stock located in New York and Ottawa were “less directly deployable.” The implication: in a crisis, your gold is only as good as your access to it. And American custody no longer guarantees that access.
France followed a similar path in March, when Banque de France announced it had sold 129 tonnes — roughly 5 percent of its total holdings — in New York and instead purchased gold in Europe. Unlike the Dutch, France didn’t reference geopolitics. It pointed to a desire to upgrade the purity of its holdings to over 99.99 percent, claiming the US-held portion fell short of that standard.
Purity or politics, the effect was the same: French gold left New York. Dutch gold followed. The pattern is accelerating.
The Trust Erosion Is the Story
Here’s what the data actually shows about where these reserves are ending up. Goldman noted that central bank holdings at the New York Fed declined by 40 tonnes in August, while holdings at the Bank of England rose by 46 tonnes in the same period. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a structural shift.
Even more telling is the secrecy surrounding it all. When Goldman surveyed central banks in August about where they stored their gold, 12 percent declined to confirm their location — up from 10 percent the prior year. Eighteen percent said they would decline to answer where they’d store their gold over the next 12 months. Nine percent said they planned to diversify further.
A decade ago, this kind of opacity would have been virtually unheard of. Central banks published their reserve composition and storage locations as a matter of course. Transparency was a feature of the system, not a vulnerability. Now, declining to disclose is becoming a strategy.
Who Is Buying, and Why It Matters Beyond Volume
China accounted for roughly 25 tonnes of August’s purchases, making it the largest identifiable buyer. But Goldman noted that China’s reserves remain “underweight” in gold relative to plausible long-term allocations, which suggests this isn’t the end of Chinese accumulation — it may just be the beginning. Emerging markets as a group have been steadily increasing their gold purchases since 2022, driven by the same calculus that motivated the Dutch and French moves: the realization that reserve assets held in another country’s jurisdiction are subject to that country’s political discretion.
Domestic-market central banks have largely sat on the sidelines of this buying spree, Goldman observed, because many already hold substantial gold reserves for historical reasons. For them, the debate is no longer about how much gold to hold. It’s about where to keep it.
That distinction matters. It means the demand side isn’t going away. And the supply side — the willingness of US institutions to serve as custodians for foreign reserves — is being tested in ways that predate the current conflict cycle.
Second-Order Effects
The first-order effect is straightforward: gold is moving from American vaults to British and domestic ones. The second-order effects are harder to quantify but likely more consequential.
Dollar credibility takes a subtle hit every time a central bank chooses London over New York for its gold. It’s not the same as selling dollars or Treasury bonds, but it signals the same underlying doubt — that the United States may not remain a reliable custodian of foreign reserves in a fractured geopolitical environment. Sanctions on Russian reserves in 2022 were a wake-up call for countries that had never considered the possibility that their assets could be frozen. The Dutch and French moves are partial answers to that wake-up call.
Commodity markets absorb the buying pressure, of course. But the more interesting market shift is in custody itself. The Bank of England is absorbing more physical gold than at any point in its modern history, while the New York Fed’s vaults — long considered the securest and most liquid in the world — are losing stock to European alternatives. The infrastructure of global reserve management is being rewired without any formal announcement or treaty change.
What Comes Next
Goldman noted that the motivations for diversifying away from G7 reserve currencies — most notably the US dollar — are “likely to remain in place.” That’s diplomatic language for: this isn’t a cyclical trend. It’s structural.
If current trajectories hold, we should expect more central banks to follow the Dutch and French models over the coming quarters. We should expect the percentage of undisclosed storage locations to climb past the current 12 percent. We should expect the Bank of England to continue gaining physical reserves at the New York Fed’s expense.
None of this is dramatic on its own. A few tonnes here, a reallocation there. But cumulative relocation of this kind — happening quietly, without fanfare, and without official acknowledgment of the geopolitical drivers — is how reserve architectures change. Not with declarations. With moves.
The question for investors and policymakers is whether they’ll notice in time to adjust.