eli5: how is there only enough gold in the world to fit a cube under the Eiffel tower, when countries have gold reserves, gold jewellery is common and gold is frequently used in industrial appliances?

Question

eli5: how is there only enough gold in the world to fit a cube under the Eiffel tower, when countries have gold reserves, gold jewellery is common and gold is frequently used in industrial appliances?

In: 18

Answer 1

1. The Eiffel Tower is pretty damn big

2. This number is for pure gold

3. Jewelry is not made from pure gold as pure gold is as maliable as soft clay, you can easily press your fingerprint into it.

4. As an example the typical IPhone, while it does contain gold, contains only .034 grams of gold.

5. Worldwide the amount of mined/used gold is estimated at 187,000 metric tons (or 412,264,430 lbs) with another 57,000 (or 125,663,340 lbs) metric tons discovered but unmined.

6. All the pure gold mined in the world would fit into roughly 2 Olympic sized swimming pools.