Netherlands pulls gold out of the US for fears of 'geopolitical unrest'

Most of this is googleable but there are thousands of traders that make sure the gold price is the same globally so nobody had to “move” their gold in the reverse for this trade to work.

The difference between London and the US is that the bars are of different size (12.5 vs 1kg).

Their goal isn't only safe storage, it's also being able to sell when needed.

You can't quickly trade with the gold that's in their own safe storage facility in Zeist, because you would need to physically transport it. The reserve at the Bank of England is put there because there is a large market for gold trading there. So you can use the gold immediately to influence the markets.

Putting it in a safe place in another European country wouldn't have added value over storage in Zeist.

London has an old school gold exchange. Pretty much you can buy and sell by moving a part between vaults (at least that's how I understood it to work in the past). Now I expect it to be just a spreadsheet but who knows.

I’m surprised why they don’t just move it back to their own country and put it in a safe in Netherland.

England is a country in Europe.

England is definitely a European country. I'm tired of people constantly making this political abuse of language of conflating "the EU" with "Europe".

(And yes, saying "America" for "US of A" annoys me too. First step towards losing an imperialist state of mind is letting people from Canada and Brazil be in America).

Besides the reasons listed by the others, this also a matter of relationships as there a deep ties between these nations and the Netherlands. Without the Dutch financing the Americans, America would not have been able to become independent from the English. The Dutch were also the first country on earth to acknowledge America's independence [1][2], costing them a war with the pissed England [3].

There are a lot of Dutch people living in Canada.[4]

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1. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_de_Graaff>

2. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Salute>

3. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Anglo-Dutch_War>

4. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Canadians>

Makes trade easier than shifting currency. It’s also more stable and liquid if you need to make things happen in an emergency.

Makes it harder to steal.

Don't forget that the European continent has had wars almost non-stop for centuries. It is a good strategy to place your gold in a location that has not seen much action in the past 250 years.

> I'm curious the reason why it was ever held in the US and Canada

Random Educated Guess; Probably part of some show of mutual trust to cement a treaty or other agreement, made way back when allied governments could mostly trust one another to hold to such agreements somewhat reliably?

(another guess) to convert to dollars, the gold would need to be delivered to the custody of the US Fed, which is easiest when the bars are physically in the Fed's vault. in a low-trust situation, you have all the gold in your own country, but then its so much leas liquid bc you need to physically deliver it to trading partners, or they must trust your accounting of their share in your vault.

I would assume WWII and the Cold War?

Could be due to the fact that before 1970s the currency was backed by Gold and they had it in US to easily convert it to USD if needed

It was originally payments owed to Dutch interests in America being converted to gold and stored locally on their behalf, as opposed to having to be transported across the Atlantic back to the Netherlands.

Then later the Dutch moved a lot more of their gold over there before/during WWII in order to keep it out of reach of the Nazis.

People still buy BTC (let alone central banks)?