Weiss said decisions about where to store gold can reflect concerns over sanctions or expropriation, as well as access to international gold markets. Gold held outside the sanctioning country may be harder for that government to seize, unlike foreign-currency assets. But he said the dollar’s role in reserves also reflects the size and strength of the U.S. economy and the depth and liquidity of its financial markets.

Germany moved about one-fifth of its U.S.-held gold to domestic vaults from 2013 to 2017. Its dollar share remained around 90% during that period and now exceeds 80%, Weiss wrote. The Netherlands repatriated about two-fifths of its U.S.-custodied gold in 2014; its dollar share stayed near 83%, apart from a temporary drop to nearly 50% in 2018.

France repatriated all its U.S.-held gold in 2025 and early 2026, while its dollar share remained at 60%, according to Weiss. The Netherlands moved two-fifths of its U.S.-stored gold to London in 2026. Its dollar share fell by 10 percentage points, but remained above its 2018 low and continued to dominate its reserves. Weiss concluded that the three countries had not substantially diversified away from the dollar.

The research note also addressed gold’s rising value in global reserves. Weiss said the increase since 2024 was driven largely by a surge in private-sector demand and prices, rather than a comparable jump in central-bank purchases. He described much of the world’s gold holdings as legacy reserves accumulated before 1971, the de facto end of the Bretton Woods system. The five largest holders—the U.S., Germany, Italy, France and the IMF—account for about 52% of global gold reserves and have not meaningfully added to them since the 1970s, he wrote. Foreign official investors, meanwhile, bought nearly $200 billion in U.S. Treasury securities net from 2022 through April 2026.