Gold Per Capita
Data, charts and source notes

Central bank gold reserves: history and measurement

A factual institutional timeline, current site coverage and a public-domain U.S. Treasury series.

Coverage1900 to present context
Primary sourceUSGS and official institutional sources
Released2026-08-11
CSVJSONSource & licence manifest
Current site coverage29 countriesOfficial-reserves dataset
Hosted U.S. series2021–2025USGS public-domain observations
Global history tableNot mirroredExternal licensed tools are linked instead
Institutional history

How the monetary role of gold changed

This timeline distinguishes currency convertibility from gold’s continuing classification as an official reserve asset.

  1. 1900
    U.S. statutory gold standard

    The Gold Standard Act fixed the dollar’s gold definition within the pre-Federal Reserve monetary system.

  2. 1913
    Federal Reserve established

    Federal Reserve notes originally operated with statutory gold-reserve requirements.

  3. 1933–34
    Convertibility suspended and gold transferred

    The Gold Reserve Act transferred U.S. monetary gold ownership to the Treasury and changed the official dollar price.

  4. 1944–58
    Bretton Woods takes effect

    Member currencies were linked to the dollar while the United States maintained official gold convertibility for foreign monetary authorities.

  5. 1968
    Two-tier gold market

    Central banks stopped supporting the private market price through the London Gold Pool.

  6. 1971
    U.S. gold window closed

    The United States ended official dollar-to-gold convertibility for foreign monetary authorities.

  7. Today
    Reserve asset, not currency backing

    Monetary gold remains an official reserve asset even though major currencies are not generally redeemable for a fixed quantity of gold.

Public-domain source

U.S. Treasury gold reported by USGS

The five-year series is narrow but may be republished with attribution. It is not presented as a substitute for global central-bank reserve data.

U.S. Treasury gold, year-end
YearMetric tonnesStatus
20218,130reported
20228,130reported
20238,130reported
20248,130reported
20258,130estimate
Supporting official series

Largest official gold-reserve values per country

This supporting view isolates the 29-country official-reserves dataset from the wider 195-country holdings estimate.

Current official gold reserves
RankCountryMetric tonnesObservation
1United States8,133.52026-03-31
2Germany3,351.52026-03-31
3Italy2,451.82026-03-31
4France2,4372026-03-31
5Russia2,332.72026-03-31
6China2,298.52026-03-31
7Switzerland1,039.92026-03-31
8India880.22026-03-31
9Japan8462026-03-31
10Türkiye623.92026-03-31
View all 29 countries