New mining output is a really small fraction of the total gold supply.
Could be, yes. As far as I remember, I read somewhere that newly mined gold represents about 1-2% of the total supply per year, which could be a lot of new gold per year. But I am not sure, would have to look that up.
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Oh, that would be more than I thought. Still, I think there must be large sellers for those countries to accumulate that much, so quickly.
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Also, I personally don’t trust any numbers that Russia publishes. I am pretty surely they do buy. On the other hand they had to sell a couple of times in the past to intervene for their falling currency. A big chunk of their gold is actually not in their possession (but in the UK and other places) and so it is not clear whether they will see it again.
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That's a good point. I think a lot of the countries who are storing their gold with the US government probably won't see it again either.
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