Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and head of the powerful Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has shared memes supporting decades-old conspiracy theories about the state of the United States (U.S.) government’s gold reserves in Fort Knox. One prominent politician has even welcomed the rare opportunity to gain insight into the heavily guarded facility.
Since Saturday, Musk has posted several times on social media, questioning the status of the U.S. government’s infamous gold reserves in Fort Knox, wondering whether the gold is “still there” or has “disappeared” and calling for a “live broadcast” from the facility.
Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, responded “let’s do it” to one of Musk’s posts calling for annual audits of Fort Knox.
There is no evidence supporting Musk’s theory of missing gold, but the state of the reserves remains strictly off-limits to the public.
The U.S. Treasury’s vault in Fort Knox, Kentucky, holds 147.3 million troy ounces of gold, which accounts for about 59% of the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s total gold reserves, according to data from the U.S. Mint.
With gold trading at over 2.930 dollars per troy ounce on the open market on Tuesday, the gold in Fort Knox has a market value of 435 billion dollars – more than the market value of Europe’s most valuable publicly traded company, LVMH, the parent firm of Tiffany & Co. and Louis Vuitton.
However, the government values this gold at just 6 billion dollars, using an accounting valuation of 42.22 dollars per troy ounce.
Who has been inside the Fort Knox vault?
The vault doors at Fort Knox have been opened to unauthorized individuals only three times: in 1943 for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1974 for 10 members of Congress to “clear the cobwebs” and “reassure the public that their gold was intact and secure,” and in 2017 for a delegation including Senator Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, and then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
The skepticism, led by Musk, over whether the gold reserves in Fort Knox match the government’s accounting echoes similar doubts from the past. A media article from 1974 about Congress’s visit was headlined: “Visitors Get a Peek at Fort Knox Gold—It’s There.”
How much gold does the U.S. have?
The U.S. is by far the largest holder of gold among nations, with 8.133 metric tons of the precious metal in its reserves – twice as much as the next-largest holder, Germany. According to the World Gold Council, U.S. reserves make up nearly 4% of the total above-ground gold in the world.
“I think the gold is there,” said former Congressman Ron Paul, Senator Paul’s father. However, “the question is who actually owns it because there are many loans and financial tricks,” added Paul Sr., who has long advocated for an audit of Fort Knox. In 2011, he introduced the Gold Reserve Transparency Act in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Why is the gold stored in Fort Knox?
The U.S. Treasury’s gold depository was built in the 1930s when the need arose for a centralized and secure location for most of the nation’s gold reserves. Kentucky was chosen as the location due to concerns that existing reserves along the U.S. East Coast were more vulnerable to foreign attacks, given the tense situation in Europe at the time, which was on the brink of war.
Between 1941 and 1944, the Fort Knox vault also safeguarded the original U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
The renewed public interest in U.S. gold reserves comes at a time when the precious metal has become highly sought after on Wall Street. Gold prices have surged more than 40% in the past 12 months and 10% since the beginning of the year, outperforming major U.S. stock indexes. Investors have turned to this longtime safe-haven asset amid rising national debt and concerns over inflation, Forbes writes.
