That is a pretty terrible source of information on the subject. First off, it should be immediately obvious it is a terrible source because its entire purpose is to sell the most gold to the most people at the highest price. So we already know objectivity is out the window.JBTX wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 7:28 amhttps://www.usmoneyreserve.com/blog/how ... the-world/Salmo Trutta wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 7:05 am Living in Colorado, we bump into old or mothballed mines all the time while out hiking, fishing, biking, overlanding etc.
One thing I've learned is that there is plenty of gold still in there, but the current prices do not support extraction. If the price goes up, or the technology/productivity improves, many of those mines will restart production.
And the price will drop...
Most gold is estimated to have been discovered. Of course that is an estimate. Hard to estimate what you haven't discovered. About 80% of gold discovered gold has been mined.
It would take a geologist to really go into the details. But I can give a brief overview. Gold miners have no reason at all to find more gold than they can mine in the near future. They like to find enough for about the next 5 years of production, 10 years of mine planning, and 15 years of advanced reconnaissance. Considering the volatility of gold prices it would be crazy to do any more. Also at times in the past there have been odd government policies to tax mines on proven reserves, which creates an incentive to never prove more reserves than necessary. Also paradoxically gold miners have had a tendency to produce more gold when prices are low, and less when prices are high.
When I was very young there was a certain area that was estimated to have enough gold to mine until 1994. They kept finding more. Right now that area is estimated in private to have enough gold for two more generations of miners. I don't know the status of those resources and whether they have been reported as reserves (I would guess largely no, and they are marked more as promising leads), but the general takeaway is that there is plenty of gold left. Then you could get into the gold which is known but not currently economical to extract for a hundred possible reasons.