US Gold Reserves: How Much Gold Does America Have?

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The United States holds 8,133.5 tonnes of gold, the largest official gold reserve in the world. In ounces that is 261,498,926 fine troy ounces, the figure the US Treasury reports each month in its Status Report of U.S. Government Gold Reserve. As of the latest report, dated 31 August 2026, the total is unchanged from the previous month. It has barely moved in more than four decades.

Most of America’s gold reserves sit in three US Mint facilities: Fort Knox in Kentucky, West Point in New York and Denver in Colorado. A smaller amount is held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. On the government’s books, all of it is still valued at US$42.2222 per ounce, a statutory price fixed in 1973, which values the whole reserve at about US$11 billion. At 2026 market prices, the same gold is worth more than US$1 trillion.

This guide sets out how much gold the US has and where it is stored, how the reserve is valued, and how the holdings rose to a post-war peak and then fell to today’s level. It also covers the long-running questions over audits, and how America’s gold compares with the reserves of other leading countries.

How Much Gold Does the US Have?

The US government holds 8,133.5 tonnes of gold, or 261,498,926 fine troy ounces. That is the total in the US Treasury’s Status Report of U.S. Government Gold Reserve dated 31 August 2026. The Treasury publishes the report every month on its FiscalData website. “Fine” ounces count only the pure gold in each bar or coin, not the weight of any other metals mixed in.

The Treasury report splits the total into three categories:

Category	Fine troy ounces	Tonnes	Share of total
Mint-held deep storage	245,262,897.040	7,628.5	93.8%
Mint-held working stock	2,783,218.656	86.6	1.1%
Federal Reserve Bank-held gold	13,452,810.545	418.4	5.1%
Total US government gold reserve	261,498,926.241	8,133.5	100%

Source: US Treasury, Status Report of U.S. Government Gold Reserve, 31 August 2026.

Deep storage is gold bullion that the United States Mint holds in sealed vaults, and it makes up nearly all of the reserve. Working stock is gold the Mint keeps on hand as raw material for its coin programmes, including bars, coin blanks and unsold coins. The rest is held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, mostly as bullion with a small amount in coins. All of it belongs to the US Treasury, including the gold stored at the Fed.

The total has barely changed since the mid-1980s, so the US has been the world’s largest official gold holder for decades. By World Gold Council figures for the end of 2025, America holds more than a fifth of all the gold in central bank and government reserves. It holds more gold than Germany and Italy, the next two largest holders, combined. Spread across a population of around 342 million, that works out at about 24 grams of gold per person, less than Germany’s 40 grams or Switzerland’s 115 grams, despite the far larger total.

US Gold Reserves by Depository

Almost all of America’s gold is held in four places. Three are US Mint facilities: Fort Knox, West Point and Denver. The fourth is the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. A small working stock is spread across the Mint’s production sites.

Location	Facility	Fine troy ounces	Tonnes	Share of total
Fort Knox, Kentucky	US Bullion Depository	147,341,858.382	4,582.8	56.3%
West Point, New York	US Mint at West Point	54,067,331.379	1,681.7	20.7%
Denver, Colorado	US Mint at Denver	43,853,707.279	1,364.0	16.8%
New York, New York	Federal Reserve Bank of New York	13,452,810.545	418.4	5.1%
All Mint locations	Working stock (coins, blanks, miscellaneous)	2,783,218.656	86.6	1.1%
Total		261,498,926.241	8,133.5	100%

Source: US Treasury, Status Report of U.S. Government Gold Reserve, 31 August 2026.

Fort Knox in Kentucky holds 4,582.8 tonnes, more than half of the US gold reserve. The US Bullion Depository was built there in the 1930s to move the nation’s gold away from the coast. It sits next to the US Army base of the same name, and it is closed to the public.

West Point in New York holds 1,681.7 tonnes, the second-largest share. It opened in 1938 as a depository for silver bullion, which earned it the nickname “the Fort Knox of Silver”. It later became a full mint. Today it strikes the Eagle and American Gold Buffalo coins as well as storing gold.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York holds 418.4 tonnes of Treasury gold in its vault beneath Lower Manhattan. That is only a small part of the vault’s contents. Most of the gold stored there belongs to foreign central banks and international institutions, not the United States. See our guide to the New York Fed gold vaults for more.

The US keeps all of its gold reserves on its own soil. That sets it apart from countries such as Germany and Italy, which have stored large parts of their reserves abroad in New York and at the Bank of England gold vaults in London.

How US Gold Reserves Are Valued

The US government does not value its gold at market prices. By law, the Treasury carries its gold at a statutory price of US$42.2222 per fine troy ounce. That rate is set out in Title 31 of the US Code, sections 5116 and 5117, and has not changed since 1973. At that price, the Treasury’s 261,498,926 ounces are worth US$11,041,059,957.90, about US$11 billion, according to the Status Report of U.S. Government Gold Reserve dated 31 August 2026.

The gap between that figure and the reserve’s real worth is enormous. At the LBMA gold price of US$4,171.90 an ounce on 12 October 2026, the reserve was worth about US$1.09 trillion. That is nearly 99 times its value on the government’s books.

Measure	Price per ounce	Value of US gold reserve
Book value (statutory price)	US$42.2222	US$11.04 billion
Market value (LBMA Gold Price PM, 12 October 2026)	US$4,171.90	US$1.09 trillion

The statutory price is a relic of the gold standard era. The official price was US$20.67 an ounce until 1934, when the Gold Reserve Act raised it to US$35. Congress raised it again to US$38 in 1972 and to US$42.2222 in 1973. Both increases came after the gold window had already closed in 1971, and the IMF abolished the official gold price in 1978, but no one ever updated the accounting rate. Most other central banks, including those of the eurozone, now value their gold at market prices.

The low book value also shapes how the gold appears on the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. The Fed does not own the gold. Under the 1934 Gold Reserve Act it handed its gold to the Treasury and received gold certificates in return. Those certificates are still carried at the statutory price, so the Fed’s gold certificate account stands at about US$11 billion.

The Gold Revaluation Debate

Because the gap between book value and market value now exceeds US$1 trillion, there have been calls to revalue America’s gold. The idea is that Congress could raise the statutory price, and the Treasury could then issue new gold certificates to the Fed to match the higher value. That would give the government over US$1 trillion to spend without selling any gold or borrowing more money. Supporters see it as a way to cut debt or fund new initiatives. Critics argue it would amount to creating new money, and would raise awkward questions about the Fed’s independence.

The debate picked up in February 2025, after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spoke of “monetizing the asset side” of the US balance sheet. He later said a gold revaluation was “not what I had in mind.” The idea has since appeared in two bitcoin reserve bills: Senator Cynthia Lummis’s BITCOIN Act in March 2025, and a May 2026 bill from Representative Nick Begich. Both point to revalued gold certificates as a way to fund bitcoin purchases, and neither has made it out of committee.

Even if it happened, a revaluation would change the government’s books, not the gold price. The gold itself would be no more or less valuable. What the debate does show is how far the dollar has fallen against gold since 1973, when an ounce was officially worth just over US$42.

History of US Gold Holdings

America’s gold reserves today are far smaller than they once were. At the peak in 1949, the US held almost 21,900 tonnes, more than two and a half times what it holds now. Most of the decline happened in the two decades before 1971. The reserve then dropped to its current level between the late 1970s and the mid-1980s, and has barely moved since.

Confiscation and the Gold Reserve Act

The modern US gold reserve was built in 1933 and 1934. In April 1933, during the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102. It required Americans to hand in most of their gold coins, bars and gold certificates to the Federal Reserve at US$20.67 an ounce. The Gold Reserve Act of January 1934 then transferred all of the Fed’s gold to the Treasury and raised the official price to US$35, devaluing the dollar by around 40%. Fort Knox was built soon after, and the first gold arrived there in 1937. Americans were not allowed to own gold bullion freely again until the end of 1974.

The Post-War Peak

Through the 1930s and 1940s, gold poured into the US as Europe moved its wealth away from war and paid for American goods and arms. By 1949, US gold holdings had reached almost 21,900 tonnes, about three quarters of the world’s official gold. That dominance underpinned the Bretton Woods system agreed in 1944, which put the dollar at the centre of global finance and let foreign central banks swap their dollars for US gold at US$35 an ounce.

The Drain to 1971

As Europe and Japan rebuilt, they built up large dollar balances, and more and more of those dollars were turned in for gold. France was the best-known example. US holdings fell steadily through the 1950s and 1960s. The London Gold Pool, which the US and its allies set up in 1961 to hold the gold price at US$35, collapsed in 1968. By 1971, foreign-held dollars far exceeded the gold the US had left. On 15 August 1971, President Nixon closed the gold window and ended the dollar’s convertibility into gold, a moment known as the Nixon Shock. By then, the US reserve had fallen below 10,000 tonnes, less than half its 1949 peak.

Treasury Sales and Stability Since

After the gold standard ended, the US Treasury sold gold to show that the metal no longer mattered to the monetary system. After two small auctions in 1975, it held 19 monthly auctions between May 1978 and November 1979, selling 491 tonnes in total. Further gold was used for the American Arts gold medallions, which the Mint sold between 1980 and 1984. The reserve settled at 261.5 million ounces, or 8,133.5 tonnes, and has stayed there for more than four decades.

Have US Gold Reserves Been Audited?

The US Treasury says its gold reserve is checked every year. Most of the gold is kept in deep-storage vaults at Fort Knox, West Point and Denver. Each vault compartment is closed with an official seal, and the Treasury’s Office of the Inspector General examines the sealed gold annually. The Treasury’s position, which Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent repeated in July 2026, is that all of the gold is “present and accounted for.”

Critics point out that none of this amounts to a full, independent physical audit. The 1953 audit at Fort Knox opened only 3 of its 22 vault compartments. Between 1975 and 1986, a Treasury committee audited what it said was about 97% of the Mint-held gold, but those audits were run by government staff, with no outside auditor and little published assay data. BullionStar’s research has examined the gaps in the US gold audit record in detail.

The best public look at the gold itself came in 2011. As part of a congressional hearing, the Treasury published weight lists for the bars held at the Mint facilities and the New York Fed. They showed that much of the reserve is made up of old bars melted down from gold coins, many of lower purity than modern bullion. Most do not meet the London Good Delivery standard that the wholesale gold market uses today.

Only two public visits to the Fort Knox vaults have taken place in recent decades. In 1974, members of Congress and the press were allowed in. In 2017, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin visited, but neither visit involved counting or testing the gold. The 2017 Fort Knox visit was a brief tour rather than an audit.

Pressure for a proper audit has grown since 2025. President Trump and Elon Musk both called for an inspection of Fort Knox that February, and Trump renewed the call in May 2026. In Congress, the Gold Reserve Transparency Act would require a full independent assay and inventory of US gold, repeated every five years, along with disclosure of gold transactions over the past 50 years. Representative Thomas Massie introduced it in the House in June 2025, and Senator Mike Lee introduced it in the Senate that November. Both bills are still at the committee stage. The House bill has not progressed since it was referred to the Financial Services Committee in June 2025.

US Gold Reserves in Context

US gold reserves are by far the largest in the world. According to World Gold Council figures for the end of 2025, the US holds more than twice as much gold as Germany, the second-largest holder. It holds more than Germany and Italy combined, and nearly as much as Germany, Italy and France together.

Rank	Country	Gold reserves (tonnes)	Gold as % of total reserves
1	United States	8,133.5	82.4%
2	Germany	3,350.3	82.2%
3	Italy	2,451.8	79.3%
4	France	2,437.0	79.9%
5	Russia	2,326.5	n/a
6	China	2,306.3	8.6%
8	India	880.3	17.7%

Source: World Gold Council, end-2025 figures.

Gold also makes up a very large share of America’s reserves, at more than 80% of the total. That isn’t only because the US holds so much gold. The dollar is the world’s main reserve currency, so the US has little need to hold other countries’ currencies, and its foreign exchange reserves are small by comparison. Germany, Italy and France show a similar pattern. They built up their gold under Bretton Woods and kept most of it after the system ended.

The newer buyers look very different. China’s official gold reserves are less than a third of America’s, and gold makes up under 10% of its reserves. The People’s Bank of China has been one of the most consistent gold buyers since late 2024, and its reported holdings had risen to 2,366 tonnes by 2026. Many analysts believe China’s true gold reserves are far higher than the official figures. India holds around 880 tonnes, roughly a ninth of the US total, but has also been adding to its reserves in recent years.

For the full rankings, including how central bank buying has changed since 2022, see our guide to gold reserves by country.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much gold does the United States have?

The United States holds 8,133.5 tonnes of gold, or 261,498,926 fine troy ounces. That is the total in the US Treasury’s Status Report of U.S. Government Gold Reserve dated 31 August 2026. It is the largest official gold reserve in the world, and the figure has barely changed since the mid-1980s.

Where is US government gold stored?

Most US gold is stored at three US Mint facilities: Fort Knox in Kentucky holds 4,582.8 tonnes, West Point in New York 1,681.7 tonnes, and Denver in Colorado 1,364.0 tonnes. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York holds another 418.4 tonnes. The remaining 86.6 tonnes is the Mint’s working stock for coin production. All US government gold is stored inside the United States.

What is US gold valued at on the books?

The US Treasury values its gold at a statutory price of US$42.2222 per fine troy ounce, a rate fixed by law in 1973. At that price, the 261.5 million ounces in the reserve are worth about US$11.04 billion on the government’s books.

How much is US gold worth at market price?

At the LBMA Gold Price of US$4,171.90 an ounce on 12 October 2026, US gold reserves were worth about US$1.09 trillion. That is nearly 99 times their book value of about US$11 billion.

Has the US ever sold its gold reserves?

Yes. The US Treasury sold 491 tonnes of gold in 19 public auctions between May 1978 and November 1979, after two smaller auctions in 1975. Much larger amounts left the US between the 1950s and 1971, when foreign central banks exchanged their dollars for US gold under the Bretton Woods system. US holdings fell from almost 21,900 tonnes in 1949 to 8,133.5 tonnes today.

Does the Federal Reserve own the gold?

No. US gold reserves belong to the US Treasury, including the gold stored at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The Federal Reserve gave its gold to the Treasury under the Gold Reserve Act of 1934. In return it received gold certificates, which it still holds at the statutory value of about US$11 billion.

From Sovereign Reserves to Personal Holdings

More than half a century after the US cut the dollar’s link to gold, it still holds 8,133.5 tonnes of the metal, and gold still makes up more than 80% of its official reserves. The Treasury sold gold in the late 1970s to show that gold no longer mattered to the monetary system. The sales stopped soon after, and since the mid-1980s no administration has sold any of the remaining reserve.

That restraint says a great deal. The country that issues the world’s reserve currency, and has the least need of any nation to hold gold, has chosen to keep the largest gold reserve on earth. Its own officials have repeatedly confirmed that the gold is still there. Central banks around the world have drawn the same conclusion, and are now buying gold at the fastest pace in decades. Gold remains the one reserve asset that is no other country’s liability.

The gap between the gold’s book value and its market value shows why. In 1973, an ounce of gold was officially worth just over US$42. Today it trades above US$4,000. That rise is less a measure of gold gaining value than of the dollar losing it. Talk of revaluing America’s gold would not change the gold price, but it underlines how far the dollar has fallen against the metal it was once tied to.

Individuals can’t hold a share of Fort Knox, but they can own gold directly. Gold bars and coins, such as the US Mint’s own American Gold Buffalo, give you the same asset that underpins the world’s largest official reserve, with nothing standing between you and the metal. Customers can have their bullion shipped internationally, kept secure in BullionStar’s vault storage in Singapore, or collected from our Bullion Center.