Whether global central banks will resume their strong gold purchase momentum in the future has become a major focus of attention in the global financial market.
The World Gold Council’s “2025 Global Central Bank Gold Reserves Survey” released on June 17th shows that 95% of the central banks surveyed believe that global central banks will continue to increase their gold holdings in the next 12 months, and about 43% of the central banks surveyed plan to increase their gold reserves within the next year.
Zhang Gang said that the current point of contention among Wall Street investment institutions is whether global central banks can continue the 1,000-ton gold purchase scale of the previous three years in the context of high gold prices this year. One side believes that in the context of the United States restarting a trade war of equivalent tariffs and the continued rapid expansion of the US debt scale, global central banks will accelerate the process of “de-dollarization” and diversified allocation of foreign exchange reserves, thereby increasing the purchase of gold, because currently, apart from gold, there are not many investment varieties in reserve assets that can replace the US dollar. The other side believes that the high gold price will still suppress the gold purchase intensity of global central banks, because central banks of various countries need to balance the safety and profitability of foreign exchange reserves, and the excessively high cost of gold purchase and holding will affect their ability to generate returns on reserve assets.
At present, the former’s view holds a slight edge. He disclosed it to the reporter. Since July, the trading volume of over-the-counter gold call options on Wall Street has increased by approximately 35% compared to the past, indicating that many hedge funds have purchased gold call options in advance, waiting for global central banks to resume strong gold purchases and reap the benefits of rising gold prices.
Wang Xinjie told reporters that in recent years, the proportion of the US dollar in the foreign exchange reserves of global central banks has remained basically unchanged, but the proportion of gold has been continuously increasing, causing the price of gold to almost double. Once the “de-dollarization” process triggered by the US trade war and the issue of debt sustainability leads global central banks to abandon the US dollar and invest in gold, the future increase in gold prices may be quite astonishing.
In his view, global central banks will not chase the rise in gold prices, but their strong gold purchase efforts will provide relatively high support for gold prices. When the price of gold drops significantly, global central banks will increase their purchase of gold at low prices, causing the price of gold to stabilize rapidly at a relatively high level.
Xu Yaxin, the president of Jiangxin College, believes that the two major factors driving global central banks to increase their gold purchases in the future are hedging against the risk of the persistence of US debt and the expectation of the Federal Reserve’s depreciation – especially the US debt scale of up to 36.9 trillion US dollars, which makes the financial market worried that US debt is becoming unsustainable. The accelerated depreciation pace of the Federal Reserve has increased the pressure on the depreciation of the US dollar, expanded the upside potential of gold and enhanced its asset’s value-preserving attribute.
He said that with global central banks continuously increasing their gold allocation, $3,500 per ounce would not be the peak of this round of the gold bull market, and the gold price is expected to reach a new high in the second half of the year.
