Central Banks Are Pulling Gold From the US and UK: Here's Where It's Heading
Share
Key Takeaways
France’s Banque de France completed 26 separate transactions between July 2025 and January 2026, effectively moving 129 tonnes of gold from New York to Paris and booking a combined gain of approximately 12.8 billion euros.
Germany faces mounting political pressure to repatriate 1,236 tonnes currently held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, more than a third of its total 3,352-tonne reserve, though no formal plan exists as of this writing.
Total gold held by central banks globally reached approximately $4 trillion at the start of 2026, surpassing for the first time the roughly $3.9 trillion in US Treasuries held by the same institutions.
For decades, storing gold at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Bank of England was considered standard operating procedure for central banks worldwide.
The logic was simple: deep liquidity, trusted custody, and proximity to the global gold trading market. That logic is now being actively reconsidered by governments that previously had no reason to question it.
The shift began in emerging markets. Poland, Turkey, Nigeria, and Serbia have all moved substantial gold reserves back to domestic vaults in recent years. In July 2025, Serbia returned its entire gold stock, valued at roughly $6 billion, to domestic storage. The pattern has since spread to Western Europe, most prominently in France and, in political, if not yet operational, terms, in Germany.
The driving factor is explicit in the language central banks and their governments use. Physical gold held in a domestic vault cannot be frozen by executive order in Washington.
The freeze of Russian foreign exchange reserves in 2022 demonstrated, in a single policy decision, that assets held in foreign custody at the discretion of another sovereign carry political risk that no rating agency had previously priced. Every central bank in the world absorbed that lesson simultaneously.
France Executed the Most Significant Recent Move and Made Money Doing It
France’s Banque de France completed what became one of the most discussed gold operations of the past decade between July 2025 and January 2026. Across 26 separate transactions, it sold 129 tonnes of gold held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and used the proceeds to repurchase equivalent London Good Delivery bars, the modern international standard, for storage in Paris.
The country booked a combined gain of approximately 12.8 billion euros: roughly 11 billion euros booked in 2025 and 1.8 billion euros in 2026. The gain arose from the price differential between the older-format bars sold in New York and the newly purchased modern bars in Paris, a quality arbitrage rather than a speculative trade.
France’s total gold reserve remained unchanged at approximately 2,437 tonnes. The operation relocated the metal and improved its quality without a single bar crossing the Atlantic.
It was a deliberate restructuring of reserve holdings that reduced custodial dependence on the Federal Reserve while generating a multi-billion euro accounting gain.
Germany Is the Next Pressure Point, and the Numbers Are Large
Germany‘s situation is structurally different from France’s and significantly larger in scale. The Deutsche Bundesbank currently holds 1,236 tonnes at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, representing more than a third of Germany’s total 3,352-tonne reserve.
A further 13% is held by the Bank of England. Germany completed a major repatriation of 674 tonnes in 2017 following years of political pressure. That operation took four years to complete and was widely regarded as settling the question for a generation.
It has not settled it. Leading German economists and politicians are now publicly pressuring the Bundesbank to withdraw all remaining gold from New York, explicitly citing the shift in transatlantic relations under the Trump administration.
The Guardian reported that Emanuel Mönch, a leading economist and former head of research at Germany’s Bundesbank, called for Germany’s gold reserves to be brought back from the United States, arguing that it was too “risky” to keep so much gold there under the current administration.
“Given the current geopolitical situation, it seems risky to store so much gold in the US,”
Mönch told Handelsblatt, adding:
“In the interest of greater strategic independence from the US, the Bundesbank would therefore be well advised to consider repatriating the gold.”
🚨 The most important signal for Gold may come from central banks buying it for strategic reasons.
📊 45% of surveyed central banks expect to increase their gold reserves over the next 12 months, the highest level ever recorded in the World Gold Council survey, while only one… pic.twitter.com/wAm1M4xLqU
The Bundesbank and government officials have stated that no formal plan to withdraw the remaining gold is under consideration. The gap between the political conversation and the official position, however, is narrowing.
At current gold prices, 1,236 tonnes represents over $150 billion in custodial holdings at the Federal Reserve (roughly 37% of Germany’s total gold reserves). That is not a position any central bank can repatriate in a single operation.
The Bundesbank’s 2017 exercise took four years and was conducted in a period of relative transatlantic calm. A new repatriation program, if authorized, would be executed in a structurally different diplomatic environment.
Macro Context: Gold Has Outpaced Treasuries as a Reserve Asset
The repatriation wave is unfolding against a backdrop of gold prices that have rewritten the record books. Gold reached an intraday high of approximately $5,589 per ounce in January 2026.
Central bank purchases exceeded 1,000 tonnes per year in each of 2022, 2023, and 2024, at a pace without modern precedent, before moderating to 863 tonnes in 2025, still well above the historical average of 473 tonnes per year recorded between 2010 and 2021.
The cumulative result of that buying is a historic crossover.
Total gold held by central banks globally reached approximately $4 trillion at the start of 2026, surpassing for the first time the roughly $3.9 trillion in US Treasuries held by the same institutions.
For the first time since the Bretton Woods era, the world’s central banks collectively hold more gold than U.S. government debt.
Investment banks are uniformly bullish on the trajectory from here:
Goldman Sachs has raised its 2026-2027 gold forecast to $4,000-$5,400 per ounce.
UBS has cut its near-term gold outlook, warning that stronger US economic data and delayed Fed rate cuts could push prices toward the $3,850–$4,000 range. However, the bank remains bullish over the next 12 months, citing continued central bank demand and expectations for future monetary easing.
The divergence reflects differing assumptions about the pace of reserve diversification, not disagreement about the direction of travel.
Invesco’s survey found that 68% of central banks now keep their gold reserves within their own borders, up from 50% in 2020.
The Federal Reserve’s custodial gold holdings have fallen from approximately 13,000 tonnes following the end of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 to just over 6,000 tonnes today.
The New York Fed’s gold vault is beneath its Manhattan headquarters. | Source: New York Fed
The repatriation trend underway now is not a new phenomenon. It is the latest and most politically charged chapter in a 55-year story of steady withdrawal.
Does the Gold Repatriation Wave Matter for Bitcoin, and if So, How
The connection between central bank gold repatriation and Bitcoin is indirect but not trivial. It operates through three channels, each worth examining separately.
The first is the narrative channel. The explicit reason central banks are pulling gold home is that they no longer fully trust the custodial arrangements of allied nations. The freeze of Russian foreign exchange reserves in 2022 demonstrated that dollar-denominated assets held in foreign custody can be seized by political decision. Gold in a domestic vault cannot. Bitcoin in self-custody cannot either.
The argument that Bitcoin is digital gold has always been more marketing than macroeconomics, but the geopolitical logic underpinning gold repatriation, sovereign control over an asset that no counterparty can freeze, applies to Bitcoin with equal or greater precision.
Every time a central bank publicly articulates that rationale for gold, it inadvertently strengthens the philosophical case for self-custodied Bitcoin.
The second is the dollar credibility channel. Central bank gold buying at historically elevated levels, combined with the fact that total central bank gold holdings have now surpassed total central bank US Treasury holdings for the first time since Bretton Woods, is a structural vote of no confidence in dollar-denominated reserve assets.
That erosion of dollar credibility has historically been a tailwind for Bitcoin, which is denominated in no sovereign currency and issued by no government.
The correlation is not mechanical, but the macro environment that drives gold repatriation, geopolitical fragmentation, sanctions risk, fiscal expansion, and distrust of Western custodial institutions is the same environment that has accompanied Bitcoin’s largest structural price advances.
The third channel is the most concrete and the most limited. Central banks are not buying Bitcoin. No G20 central bank has publicly disclosed Bitcoin as a reserve asset. El Salvador’s Bitcoin reserve, the most prominent sovereign holding, remains a political statement rather than a macroeconomic precedent that other treasuries are following.
The US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, established by executive order in March 2025, holds Bitcoin seized through law enforcement rather than purchased in the market, and no additional purchases have been authorised. The channel from gold repatriation to Bitcoin demand is philosophical and narrative, not yet operational at the institutional level that moves markets.
Joao Paulo Mayall, in his paper titled “The Paradox of Gold Reserves: How Foreign Central Banks’Gold Holdings Create Indirect Exposure to US Treasuries,” argues that central banks’ growing gold purchases do not amount to true de-dollarization. Instead, gold reserves remain tied to US financial infrastructure through pricing, custody, settlement, and Treasury market linkages. The paper concludes that while gold reduces some Treasury-related risks, a combination of repatriated gold and self-custodied Bitcoin may offer countries a more neutral reserve strategy.
The net assessment is this: gold repatriation does not directly bid Bitcoin higher. But the geopolitical reasoning that is driving it, the desire for assets that cannot be frozen, seized, or devalued by a foreign sovereign, is the most powerful long-term argument in Bitcoin’s favor.
As more central banks articulate that reasoning publicly and act on it with gold, they are building the intellectual infrastructure that a future sovereign Bitcoin allocation would draw on.
Whether that future arrives in two years or twenty depends on variables that the gold repatriation data alone cannot answer.
Disclaimer:
The information provided in this article is for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be, nor should it be construed as, financial advice. We do not make any warranties regarding the completeness, reliability, or accuracy of this information. All investments involve risk, and past performance does not guarantee future results. We recommend consulting a financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
Dr. Guneet Kaur is a senior editor at CCN.com and a Science Fellow at Exponential Science. She is a fintech and blockchain expert with extensive experience in digital finance education, blockchain ecosystems, and cryptocurrency markets. She has worked with global media such as Cointelegraph, as well as education and blockchain platforms, to design and lead strategic content and learning initiatives. As an educator and assessor for top-tier executive programs, she bridges real-world fintech trends with academic insight.
Dr. Kaur is also a published researcher and peer reviewer across fintech and data science journals, including Financial Innovation Journal and International Journal of Big Data Intelligence and Applications. Her work spans data-driven analysis, Web3 innovation, and technical content development. With a strong foundation in both industry and academia, she translates complex financial technologies into practical applications, empowering learners, professionals, and institutions across the rapidly evolving digital finance landscape.
