Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has a message for anyone who spent the last few months wondering whether America’s gold reserves actually exist: they do, they’re at Fort Knox, and there are receipts.
Bessent confirmed this week that all US gold is fully accounted for, pointing to an audit report dated September 30, 2024, as the documentary evidence. The statement comes after President Trump and Elon Musk both raised public questions in early 2025 about the status of the reserves, turning what is usually a sleepy government accounting matter into something considerably more dramatic.
The numbers behind the vault door
The US officially holds 261.5 million ounces of gold, which makes it the largest official gold stock in the world by a significant margin. Roughly 56% of that sits at Fort Knox in Kentucky, with the remainder distributed across other Federal Reserve and Treasury facilities.
The government carries that gold on its books at $42.22 per ounce, a figure that has not been updated since the early 1970s when the US formally abandoned the gold standard. At that official accounting price, the total book value comes to approximately $11 billion.
