Reading in between the lines, it seems as if a good chunk of gold has gone missing and there is an attempt by both sides to save face.
I have lost track of the clearest version of this story that I have seen, but it is mentioned in the 'Transfers by Clearing' section here: http://www.wondermondo.com/Countries/Au/MicronesiaFS/Yap/Rai...
Would explain the logistic challenges and the need to re-melt the bars if they had robbed chiseled apart.
Pretty disappointing if you ask me. The entire gold vault (one million ounces of gold) is worth about a third of one percent of JPMorgan Chase's entire market capitalization.
The only thing that's safe to assess about that bullion is that for all human intents and purposes, it'll outlast infinite numbers of generations, and the other stuff --- won't. That alone tells of the impossibility and futility of putting any sort of currency number on it, in fact, any figure will do --- $100 or $100k, whatever the world perceives will be equally valid and equally workable. Doubly so since "you can't eat it", it's in the final consequence not broadly "needed at any price" for industry, and the actual supply for its prime purpose (preserve some proxy of wealth through the generations) need not be increased, and every physical ounce above or below ground is in extremis already owned by someone.
Revealing a "problem" with US-held gold would be a blow to US currency dominance. The value of such a shift in global power is vastly more than the total value of gold on the planet, which is about 8-9 trillion US$.
In other words, gold is nowhere near able to become a currency substitute, but it is potentially a bomb that can damage the dollar.
A good example to consider is aluminium. In early 1880s, the price of aluminium was around $10000 of today's dollars for kilogram -- actually the price of ounce made more sense, as you very rarely saw pieces of aluminium so large to weigh a kilogram back then. For example, the capstone for Washington Monument, weighing 9 kilograms, was the largest single piece of aluminium ever cast at that time.
Then, in 1888, the modern process of aluminium was invented, and soon its price rapidly fell by orders of magnitude.
Is there a cliff where gold as a store of value just starts crashing? Or would the fantasy continue for the non-institutional holders for a while?
Most central banks have foreign reserves ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-e... ) and and central banks' gold reserves are typically less than 1% of their reserves. So gold backing any currency is just a small part of all gold in existence (about 170 000 000 kg ~ 7T USD)
For "all currency", the money supply is a lot (converted to USD): US M0 is 10T, UK 2.85T USD, Eurozone ~8T, Australia ~1.8T. And China, Japan, India and so on also has big monetary bases.
You CONVERTING gold into USD on a current value. But rest assured if one million ounces are rendered untouchable for period of 100 years due to radioactivity, you can bet your bottom dollar the price of gold (remaining stock) will sky rocket.
What is it about gold that triggers wild conspiracy theories from seemingly rational people?
I will say that, like a stopped clock, it generates something meaningful once in a while. But so does a Markov model.
Or more likely: you do not want to cause any confusion in the markets. Ultimately the state of that gold has very little impact on the world as it moves. However any speculation about it, potentially can have impact (and most likely not positive one). When people in Europe started to question the state of that Gold Germany and other countries had to act in some form.
So for as long as the general population does not further dig into the issue (or we have some sort of cataclysmic event) the gold does not matter all that much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_repatriation
So for a while the U.S. was saying to Germany 'thanks for those cars, machine tool and other goodies, have some gold, we will keep it in the vault safe until you need it...' and, after a while, got a bit lax about moving the piles of gold from one vault to the next.
So it is not as if this gold got there due to the Germans prudently shipping it across the Atlantic for safe keeping, it is money that should have been paid in gold for goods exported by Germany to the USA. I think they were promised to be paid and no physical gold was ever moved or paid.
Also after WWII the US had accumulated essentially all the worlds gold reserves leaving their currencies without backing. The alternative to the Bretton Woods agreement was the US gifting gold reserves.