18/08/2026
The History of Gold
Most people look at a gold chart and see the last five years. This one goes back to 1792.
In 1792 the US dollar was defined in gold at $19.39 an ounce. By 1834 that had been adjusted to $20.67, and it stayed there for almost a century. Not because gold was worth that, but because that was the rule.
In 1934 the government repriced gold to $35 an ounce, one year after making it illegal for Americans to own it. They bought at $20.67 and revalued to $35. That is a 41 percent devaluation of the dollar in a single stroke.
Then $35 held for another 34 years. Two thirds of the world's official gold had moved to the United States during the wars, and Bretton Woods built the entire global monetary system on top of that pile. Every currency pegged to the dollar, the dollar pegged to gold.
By 1968 the peg needed a committee of central banks selling into every rally just to hold the line. It broke, and gold got a free market price for the first time.
In 1971 Nixon closed the gold window. The last physical anchor came off the world's money and has never gone back on.
What followed is the part worth studying. Gold ran to $195 by 1974, then gave back half of it by 1976. That shakeout removed most of the early crowd. The second leg took it to $875 by January 1980 on a 15 percent inflation print.
Then came the 19 year correction. From the 1980 high all the way down to $252 in 1999. Twenty years of nothing, and that is the part nobody puts on the highlight reel.
From that 1999 low, a 12 year bull cycle took gold to $1,921 in 2011. A four year correction followed, bottoming at $1,046 in 2015, a 45 percent drawdown inside a secular bull market.
We have been advancing since. Between 2022 and 2025 central banks bought close to 3,900 tonnes, and in 2025 gold passed US Treasuries as the world's largest reserve asset by value. The buyer profile in this leg is official sector, not retail. That is what makes it different from 2011.
Every major move in that 230 year history comes back to the same two things. Real interest rates, and confidence in the people issuing the currency.
