US gov is supposed to have 4580 tons of gold ðŠ reserves.
This is around 2% of total physical gold in circulation.
If it's gone (stolen or misappropriated), and this is made public, the US ðïļ will have two choices:
1) once again confiscate foreign gold (6-7000 tons in US custody), ðŠĶ
2) leapfrog & pivot quickly to Bitcoin. âïļ
The latter will crash gold price, the former will pump it.
Auditing gold is hard: very expensive and cumbersome. De facto you have to melt and recast all the gold bars.
But it could be done.. once a decade for example..
Based on public information there was a full Fort Knox audit in 1953 and partial in 1974.
I just filed so called "FOIA request" to the US Treasury to obtain documents from these audits. Based on Freedom of Information Act I should be able to get something, let's see. ð 