# Gold overtakes US Treasuries: the signal Europe can no longer ignore<\/p>\n
At the end of 2025, a threshold that few observers expected to see crossed in their lifetime was crossed: the value of the gold reserves held by states overtook that of the US Treasury bonds held by foreign official institutions. The US Federal Reserve published a research note in early September to play down the significance of this shift. The European Central Bank had preceded it in June, with similar arguments. When the two guardians of the major Western currencies take up the pen to explain that an event does not deserve the attention it is receiving, experience teaches that it deserves twice as much.<\/p>\n
At the end of 2025, global gold reserves represented 5.1 trillion dollars<\/strong>. Even after subtracting the stock of the United States, the world’s largest holder, that leaves 4 trillion dollars of sovereign gold, against 3.9 trillion dollars of US Treasury bonds in the hands of foreign central banks and official institutions. The figure does not come from a circle of metal enthusiasts: it appears in the Federal Reserve’s own note.<\/p>\n This shift rests on two drivers. The first is price: gold appreciated by roughly 30% in 2024, then by around 60% in 2025<\/strong>. The second is accumulation: more than 1,000 tonnes of net purchases per year between 2022 and 2024, and still close to 850 tonnes in 2025, roughly double the pace of the previous decade. And the movement is not over. In the World Gold Council’s annual survey, 45% of the central banks polled, a record, say they intend to increase their own gold reserves over the next twelve months, and 89% expect global gold reserves to rise.<\/p>\n Both institutions put forward defensible arguments. Most of the increase stems from valuation, not from a sudden surge in purchases. A handful of countries, the United States, Germany, France and Italy foremost among them, hold stocks inherited from the Bretton Woods era, so massive that gold accounts for more than 80% of their international reserves. The ECB adds that, once price effects are corrected at the end-2023 gold price, gold’s share of global reserves (16%) would merely catch up with that of the euro (16%), far behind Treasury bonds. The Fed even points out that by mid-2026, Treasuries had moved back ahead of gold held outside the United States.<\/p>\n These clarifications deserve to be read carefully, because they say a great deal. Even stripped of all valuation effects, gold now stands level with the world’s second currency in official reserves. And valuation is not a statistical artefact: it is the price the global market agrees to pay for an asset with no counterparty, no issuer and no default risk. Central banks, for their part, vote with their vaults: 84% expect gold to weigh more heavily in global reserves within five years, and 74% anticipate a decline in the dollar’s share<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In mid-August, the public debt of the United States crossed 40 trillion dollars<\/strong>, a doubling in less than ten years. At the same time, the US Treasury expanded its programme of buying back its own long-dated bonds, in order to support a segment of the market where private demand has grown more hesitant. Faced with a debt of this size, a state has only three options: cut its spending, accept durably higher rates, or contain rates by letting inflation erode the real value of what it owes. Markets appear less and less convinced that the first path will be chosen.<\/p>\n This doubt transforms the way interest rates are read. Traditionally, rising real rates penalise gold, which pays neither interest nor dividends. But when rates rise because investors are questioning a state’s fiscal sustainability, the logic reverses: gold ceases to be a bet on rates and becomes once again what it has always been, a store of purchasing power that depends on nobody’s signature. It is this shift, discreet but profound, that played out this summer on the bond markets.<\/p>\n The report published by the ECB in June contains a figure that few commentaries picked up: at the end of 2025, gold represented 27% of global official reserves<\/strong>, ahead of US Treasury bonds (22%) and ahead of the euro itself (15%). For a European saver, the observation is worth pondering: in the vaults of the planet’s central banks, the metal today weighs nearly twice as much as the currency he carries in his pocket.<\/p>\n Europe is, moreover, an actor in the movement. Poland was the world’s largest official buyer in 2025, with around one hundred tonnes, ahead of Kazakhstan, Brazil, China and Turkey. Since 2022, Warsaw has accumulated 320 tonnes, almost as much as Beijing. And the mirror of American debt can be found on this side of the Atlantic as well: according to Eurostat, euro area public debt is approaching 89% of GDP, with Greece at 143.5%, Italy at 138.9%, France at 117.6% and Belgium at 109.1%. The mechanics of the three options apply word for word to Europe. Belgium, for its part, holds 227 tonnes of gold in its official reserves: an inheritance that has never been so aptly named.<\/p>\n Yet the most instructive example of the year comes not from a buyer, but from a seller. Turkey, which had accumulated 220 tonnes of gold since 2022, sold or lent around 130 tonnes to defend its currency and absorb the surge in its energy bill after the outbreak of the war in the Middle East. Some saw it as a disavowal of the metal. It is the opposite.<\/p>\n When a country goes through the storm, it does not sell what is worthless: it mobilises what converts instantly, everywhere, without any discount of confidence. Turkish gold played exactly the role for which central banks hold it, that of the ultimate reserve asset, usable when other channels close. Even by selling, Turkey confirmed the monetary function of gold. Savers can transpose this lesson to their own scale: a reserve is not judged on calm days, but on difficult ones.<\/p>\n From our experience on the ground at Gold & Silver Company, we observe that private individuals increasingly reason like central bankers: they are not looking for one more investment, they are building a reserve, in grams rather than in tonnes, for the same motives as states. The movement can also be read in euro prices: the ounce is trading above 3,700 euros<\/strong>, after a record at 5,589 dollars in January, a correction of around 30% spread over several months, then a clear rebound in August.<\/p>\n This volatility is nothing abnormal after such a sequence, and nobody should expect a straight-line progression. We make no price forecasts: that is not our business. The major financial houses, for their part, are venturing them: State Street has set a year-end target of 5,000 dollars an ounce, its head of gold strategy even mentioning 10,000 dollars as a question of timing rather than of principle, while Natixis and UBS publish targets of the same order. What is a matter of observation, by contrast, is that central bank demand structurally underpins the physical market, for savers and for professionals of the metal alike. Those who wish to gain exposure favour gradual entry, in listed investment coins<\/a> or in certified bars<\/a>, rather than a single entry point, and they track the gold price<\/a> in euros rather than in dollars: it is in their own currency that their purchasing power is at stake.<\/p>\n Central banks do not buy gold to speculate: they are looking for an asset that depends on no issuer and that weathers crises. A private individual can apply the same logic at his own scale, by devoting a fraction of his wealth to it and entering gradually, in order to reduce the risk attached to a single entry point. At Gold & Silver Company, at the agency in Dottignies, our advisers welcome visitors without an appointment, Monday to Saturday from 10 a.m., to explain the formats suited to each situation, from listed investment coins to the bars produced by our refinery<\/a>. Explaining before selling, understanding before buying: that is how we work.<\/p>\n You do not need to be an institution to buy as close to the source as possible. Gold & Silver Company is a refinery approved by the Royal Mint of Belgium (RMB): the bars are cast, checked and certified on site, in its own analysis laboratory. Prices, indexed to the live price, are displayed publicly on the website and updated continuously. You can come to the agency in Dottignies<\/a>, without an appointment, Monday to Saturday from 10 a.m., or write to us for a remote purchase: we then walk you through each step, from the order form to dispatch in a discreet parcel, insured and handed over exclusively against signature.<\/p>\n Yes, directly. The value of a gold jewel follows the price of the metal, and a lot appraised a few years ago is worth appreciably more today. At the agency, the appraisal is immediate, free and without obligation<\/a>: the checking and weighing are done in front of you, the scale’s screen turned towards the client, and the weight is read at the moment of weighing. Potentially rare coins are examined by our numismatists, because some are worth more than their weight in gold. Many visitors leave surprised by the real value of what had been sleeping in a drawer. In less than thirty minutes, you know what your gold represents at the day’s price.<\/p>\n To a large extent, yes. Silver shares with gold the status of a historic monetary metal, while also carrying growing industrial demand, from photovoltaics to electronics. When the ratio between the price of gold and that of silver reaches historically high levels, part of the investment community turns to the white metal, seen as lagging its elder. Gold & Silver Company buys and sells silver in all its forms, bars, coins and silverware<\/a>, with the same analytical rigour as for gold. Our teams handle significant volumes at the agency every week and advise you according to your objective, whether wealth preservation or diversification.<\/p>\n Updated on 5 September 2026 by the editorial team of Gold & Silver Company.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" End of 2025, a threshold few expected to see crossed: global gold reserves overtook US Treasuries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":505,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actualite"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldandsilvercompany.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Fed and the ECB downplay it, and that is precisely the signal<\/h2>\n
40 trillion dollars: the debt that is changing gold’s function<\/h2>\n
Europe is not a spectator: gold outweighs the euro there<\/h2>\n
The Turkish lesson: gold is the liquidity of last resort<\/h2>\n
From tonnes to grams: what this means for the European saver<\/h2>\n
Frequently asked questions about gold and central bank reserves<\/h2>\n
Central banks are buying gold: should I do the same with my savings?<\/h3>\n
I live in France or Belgium: how do I buy physical gold from a refinery?<\/h3>\n
I own jewellery or inherited coins: does the current rise change their value?<\/h3>\n
Does silver benefit from the same drivers as gold?<\/h3>\n