Imagine if you become very bad guy decided to own all the gold in this world, then decided to melt it down to make him cubic one, how much would be the size of the cube? Are hundreds of cubic meters or thousands of meters?
But certainly, it is not likely to be something of this magnitude.
He says Warren Buffett, one of the richest investors in the world, that the total amount of gold in the world today, which is located on the ground, may constitute a cubic of its aspects only about 20 meters (67 feet).
But is that all? How can we know that?
There used by investors on a large scale, a figure published by the Institute for GFSM Advisory, a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters, which publishes an annual statement on the gold in the world.
The latter figure is estimated to total amount of gold in the world, according to this institution 171 thousand and 300 tons, which is almost the same size of the cube that we have mentioned.
And will be the size of the cube made from this amount of gold around 20.7 meters on each side, and we can say in other words that this will reach a height of 9.8 cubic meters above ground level if we have set for covers exactly playground and Wimbledon tennis major.
But there is no agreement from everyone on figure published by the Institute for GFMS, there are statistics the range between 155 thousand and 244 tons of gold to about 16 times that number, 2.5 million tons.
This latter figure can be made of a gold cubes along each side where 50 meters (166 feet), or a column of gold with a length of 143 meters above the stadium and Wimbledon.
So why the difference between those numbers?
This is partly due to the gold is extracted since a very long time, estimated at more than six thousand years, according to the historian who specializes in gold Affairs Timothy Greene.
Where the first coins were extracted gold from the mines in about 550 BC, under the reign of King Cruces king of Lydia, a province in Turkey there are currently, these currencies have become used to pay for traders and mercenary soldiers around the Mediterranean area.
In the period before 1492, the year when Columbus sailed to the United States, says GFMS Foundation that was extracted about 12 thousand and 780 tons of gold in this period.
But James left, one of the investors who have studied published research in this regard, and founder of Gold Money, discovered what he said was a series of exaggerated estimates.
The left believes that primitive methods to explore for minerals that were used until the medieval period means that these numbers are very high, and the total size of the real gold before 1492 is 297 tons.
The left says that the total volume of gold in the world currently has 155 thousand and 244 tons, which is less than about 10 percent from the figure published by the Institute for GFMS subsidiary of Thomson Reuters.
A relatively small difference, but it is worth more than $ 95 billion, according to gold prices today.
But there are also those who believe that both figures are very few compared to reality, including Jean Skoelz of company Real Asset to invest in gold, which says: “In the tomb of Tutankhamun alone and found the ark King made of tons and a half of gold, you can imagine the size of gold that was found in the other graves were looted before being registered. ”
The Skoelz says China even today “is not open enough” with regard to the size of gold that you extraction from mines, and in some countries, such as Colombia, “make a lot of illegal mining operations.”
But Skoelz not have a specific number on the total volume of gold in the world, but the organization is trying to do some calculations in this regard is the Gold Standard Institute.
Where experts believe this Institute that if the empty coffers of gold in banks, jewelry boxes, you’ll find no less than 2.5 million tonnes of gold, and that although they acknowledged that the evidence that they have scattered, and that this figure reflects expectations to some extent What.
The question remains: what is the right number? The answer is: No one knows.
At the end of the day, made up of all these numbers just added to the estimates other estimates, which are added to turn into more than estimates, and so on, and possibly all be far from reality.
The good news in this regard is that it is unlikely to run out our gold anytime soon, with an estimated U.S. Geological Survey that there are 52 thousand tons of gold can be extracted from the mines, which are still under the ground, and that there is more likely to discover also .
The good news is is that the way in which we use gold began to change, until now, has not disappeared gold, but was always recycled.
Says James left: “All the gold that has been mined throughout history still exists in the form of above-ground stocks, and this means that if you own hour of gold, some gold in this time may have been extracted by the Romans nearly two thousand years ago.”
But the way it is used by the gold in industries Altkologih different way, where it says the British Geological Survey said about 12 percent of gold production in the world currently finds its way into this technology sector, where mostly used in small amounts in each product individually, so maybe not recycled again economically.
In short, perhaps being “consumption” gold for the first time.
