Why is gold so valuable?

Gold is genuinely scarce: all the gold ever mined, roughly 215,000 tonnes, would fit inside a cube only about 22 metres on each side. It is also chemically unreactive, so a gold coin pulled from a shipwreck after centuries still shines, which made it ideal for money and jewellery. The metal is incredibly malleable, and a single gram can be hammered into a sheet about one square metre in area. Because it cannot be printed like paper money, investors and central banks buy gold as a hedge against inflation and crises, and central banks alone hold more than 35,000 tonnes. That demand pushed the price past 3,000 US dollars per ounce for the first time in March 2025.