Gold Price: From $1,800 to $4,000 and Beyond

In July 2021, Dylan Jovine told his readers to buy gold at $1,800 an ounce. He wrote: “The world is entering a new cycle of war. Russia and China are trying to flip the international script just like Germany did in 1914.” Wall Street laughed. Awash in cheap money, they called gold a relic. Today gold trades around $4,000, after touching an all-time high near $5,600 in January 2026. More than double from one call.

As we detail in our full review of the BTM Gold War presentation, the gold price is not being driven by the factors most investors think.

Not About Inflation

The financial press frames gold as an inflation hedge. Jovine argues this is fundamentally wrong. “You’ve been told the gold story is about inflation. About fear. About nervous money hiding in pretty rocks. What’s actually happening is the first monetary war between superpowers in 50 years.”

The real drivers of the gold price are central bank policy, geopolitical strategy, and the slow erosion of the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency. These are not abstract concepts. They are documented in official data.

Central Bank Buying

Central banks began the largest official gold accumulation since records began in 1950, over a thousand tonnes a year, roughly double the pace of the entire previous decade. In 2022 alone, two-thirds of official gold purchases, 741 tonnes, were never publicly reported. The buyers hid.

The European Central Bank has confirmed that gold has overtaken U.S. Treasury bonds as the number one reserve asset held by the world’s central banks. Twenty-seven percent of global reserves now sit in gold. Twenty-two percent in U.S. debt. In the early 2010s, gold was less than 13 percent and U.S. debt was upwards of 30 percent. The value of gold in foreign central bank vaults is approaching $4 trillion, quadruple what it was a decade ago.

China has bought gold for 20 straight months while dumping U.S. Treasury debt from $1.32 trillion to roughly $659 billion. Goldman Sachs estimates China’s real buying at 4.8 times the official figure. For more on China’s strategy, see our article on China gold reserves.

The Dollar’s Anchor Failure

The trigger for the gold price surge was February 2022. When Washington froze roughly $300 billion belonging to Russia’s central bank, every finance minister on Earth learned that money parked in the American system is not theirs. It is a permission slip that can be revoked.

Russia’s gold reserves surged 72 percent in value after the sanctions, a $96 billion gain that quietly offset a third of everything the freeze took. Every rival government watched that math and reached the same conclusion: gold beat the freeze.

The dollar had two anchors in its history. The first was gold, which lasted from 1944 to 1971. The second was oil, the petrodollar arrangement that lasted from 1971 to 2022. Both failed. Jovine argues the third anchor, whatever replaces them, will involve gold again. For more on this, see our article on de-dollarization and gold.

The 96-to-1 Gap

The U.S. Treasury owns 261.5 million ounces of gold. On its books, it values that gold at $42.22 per ounce, a number set by Congress in 1973 and never updated. Total book value: about $11 billion. At today’s market price, the same gold is worth over $1 trillion. That is a 96-to-1 gap.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said: “We’re going to monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet for the American people.” The Federal Reserve published revaluation research. Congress is advancing a gold audit bill. If the government revalues its gold, the implications for the gold price are enormous. For more on this, see our article on the gold revaluation concept.

What Gold Price Means for Stocks

The gold price matters most for gold mining stocks, which offer leverage to the metal. In 1934, when gold was revalued from $20.67 to $35, Homestake Mining rose 474 percent while the Dow fell 73 percent. In the 1970s, gold stocks rose 2,200 percent as a basket, with Copper Lake returning over 10,000 percent. Every $100 gold rises rewrites the value of every ounce in a mining company’s reserves simultaneously.

For investors who want gold stock exposure, Jovine gives away Kinross Gold (KGC). Kinross is a major American gold producer trading near 12 times earnings. The metal it produces sells near $4,000 an ounce, and Wall Street’s average price target sits at $40.24, about 74 percent above recent prices. For more, see our Kinross Gold analysis. For more on gold stocks broadly, see our article on gold mining stocks.

The Paulson Conviction

John Paulson, who made roughly $15 billion betting against the housing bubble, has invested approximately $185 million in the Arsenal company. He told Reuters he expected gold in the high-$4,000s within three years. It took nine months. Paulson said: “When the war started, Russia’s physical gold stayed safe, but all their cash, the paper reserves, were confiscated.” The man who called the housing collapse sees the same pattern in gold. For more, see our article on John Paulson’s gold investment.

The gold price is not a speculation. It is a reflection of the largest monetary shift since 1971. Whether it continues higher depends on whether the structural forces, central bank buying, de-dollarization, and the 96-to-1 gap, continue to play out. The evidence suggests they will.

This is not financial advice. Always do your own research before investing.