alt Hacker NewsGood for France to relocate gold back to their own territory, but, uh, how can this result in a 15 B gain?
"The overall size of France’s gold reserves still remained unchanged at roughly 2,437 tonnes, which are now entirely held at the BdF’s underground vault in La Souterraine."
Is this some special form of French accounting, where the gold becomes more valuable when it returns to French soil?
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Over about a year they sold their 'non-standard' (seems to be bars below the modern purity standards) US reserves, and replaced them with new reserves purchased elsewhere which are now stored in France. As the price of gold continued to rise as they did this, they ended up making a bunch of dinero while also centralizing their reserves.
They sold the existing holdings and bought new of equivalent weight(?), so somehow they ended on profit on those moves.
My guess is they buy before selling. An increasing market with a large buy might increase enough to allow for a profitable sell.
On top of this, this is physical gold, so location of the gold must play into it as well.
Gold in hand is worth $15B in the bush?
It's gold only if it comes from the Dore région of France. Otherwise it's just sparkling metal.