This is the first annual decline. The volume of gold reserves can be calculated more precisely than resources, although this is still not an easy task. According to the United States Geological Survey, underground gold reserves are currently estimated at about 50,000 tons. From this perspective, a total of around 190,000 tons of gold have been extracted, including IRA Gold and Silver, as mentioned above, although these figures vary. We can't be sure exactly how much gold has been mined from the Earth since humans started mining it.
According to experts, our best estimate is that there are between 190,000 and 200,000 tons of gold above the ground. About two-thirds of that gold has been mined since the 1950s, while the first third has been mined over thousands of years of previous history. Gold is almost indestructible, despite being a soft metal. Therefore, we can be reasonably sure that we haven't lost most of the gold we've mined.
That said, a portion of our total quantity of gold is “disappearing”. Even when the peak of gold occurs, experts say that production is unlikely to decline dramatically in the years immediately following. Extracting gold from other elements is also incredibly expensive, but more than that, the process results in gold that is too radioactive to be used safely by humans. In terms of companies, Nevada Gold Mines, which is majority-owned by Barrick Gold, is the largest gold mining complex in the world and produces around 3.5 million ounces a year.
Most of the gold produced today is used for the manufacture of jewelry, but gold is also an essential industrial metal that plays critical roles in computers, communications equipment, spaceships, jet engines and many other products. Therefore, 24-carat gold is pure gold; 12K would be an alloy that is half gold and half copper or other metals. Big gold mining giants are also likely to merge in the future to make the mining process more profitable and profitable. Similarly, there are some known gold deposits in Antarctica that may never be profitable to extract, due to the continent's extreme weather conditions.
Another possibility that could push back the end is technological advances that would allow us to extract gold safely and efficiently from rare sources. In short, although technically we still have gold deposits left to find, most of them are impossible to extract with current technology. Other important sources of gold are the extremely deep Mponeng mine in South Africa, the Super Pit and Newmont Boddington mines in Australia, the Grasberg mine in Indonesia and the mines in Nevada (USA). U.S.).
The quantities of gold used in scientific applications are so small that they cannot be recovered or recycled. To put that into perspective, around 190,000 tons of gold have been mined in total, although estimates vary. However, gold becomes difficult to trace once it is used in jewelry, so our numbers on the amount of gold in jewelry may be incorrect. Although some new gold veins have been discovered in recent years, finding one is increasingly rare in the 21st century.
This suggests that if new technologies were developed that would allow profitable gold mining with lower than usual gold densities, there could be much more gold left in the world that can be discovered, extracted and refined than it currently appears to be.
