Jody Serrano
Editor in chiefEditor in Chief at Xataka On. Before joining Webedia, I was a tech reporter at Gizmodo and The Messenger. While I've covered all sorts of things related to technology, I'm specialized in writing about social media, Internet culture, Twitch, and streamers.
All the recent talk about gold may have made you feel like you’re in Money Heist spinoff, but alas, this is the real world. It just so happens that President Donald Trump and his most famous advisor, Elon Musk, are suddenly very concerned over whether part of the country’s gold reserve is actually at Fort Knox.
Questions arise about the gold. The gold obsession seems to have stemmed from a post by far-right political commentator Alex Jones, who on Feb. 17 commented that Musk’s DOGE commission was purportedly planning to investigate the “missing gold” at Fort Knox. Musk responded to Jones directly: “It would be cool to do a live video walkthrough of Fort Knox!”
By the looks of it, it appears that Jones put the gold at Fort Knox on the radar of Musk and others. The same day, Sen Mike Lee (R-Utah) added fuel to the fire by stating he had not been allowed to visit Fort Knoxbecause it was a military installation even though he’s a U.S. senator.
“Who is confirming that gold wasn’t stolen from Fort Knox?” Musk said in response to Lee’s post. “Maybe it’s there, maybe it’s not. That gold is owned by the American public! We want to know if it’s still there.”
Trump jumps in. It didn’t take long for the president to jump on the gold train. Two days after Musk started talking about it, Trump addressed the issue on Air Force One, Axios reported.
“We're going to go into Fort Knox to make sure the gold is there,” the president said. If it isn’t, he added, “we’re going to be very upset.”
The gold at Fort Knox. Located south of Louisville, Kentucky, Fort Knox has safeguarded the country’s gold since 1937. However, much of the facility is shrouded in mystery. It doesn’t allow visitors, and its structure and content are only known by a select few, according to the U.S. Mint. If someone managed to get to the vault, they could encounter another problem: No one person knows all the steps to open it.
Given the secrecy around the vault, it’s no surprise that few people have actually seen it. In addition, gold is rarely removed from the vault. It’s only removed in small quantities to test the purity of the metal during scheduled audits.
Officials have only opened the vault with the gold on a handful of occasions throughout history. In 1974, it allowed a Congressional delegation and a group of journalists to visit the vault to quash rumors that the gold had disappeared. The visitors confirmed that the gold was indeed there.
It was last opened to non-authorized personnel in 2017. At the time, former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the governor of Kentucky, and a Congressional delegation visited the vault.
How much is the gold worth? There is currently 147.3 million ounces of gold being held at Fort Knox, which represents about half of the Treasury’s stored gold. While the gold is held at a book value asset of $42.22 per ounce, the current price of gold far exceeds that. At the time of publication, an ounce of gold was worth approximately $2,900.
As such, the total amount of gold at Fort Knox is currently worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
What’s going to happen to the gold now? Given all the hubbub, Trump recently said he was sending Musk to Fort Knox to check to make sure all the gold is there. Notably, his own Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has already assured that the reserves are intact and that yearly audits guarantee the gold is accounted for.
"We're going to open up the doors. We're going to inspect Fort Knox," Trump said on Thursday. "I don't want to open it, and the cupboards are bare.”
Images | rc.xyz NFT gallery | Scottsdale Mint
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