Skip to navigationSkip to main contentSkip to right columnADVERTISEMENTJing PanSat, July 18, 2026 at 3:15 PM GMT+2 8 min readMoneywise and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue through links in the content below.Is Fort Knox's gold still there?It's a question that has long fascinated Americans — including President Donald Trump (1).Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent now says he has an answer.During a recent conversation (2) with Fox News, host Jesse Watters asked Bessent bluntly, "Have you visited Fort Knox?""I haven't. People on my staff have," Bessent replied. "The treasurer has been to Fort Knox, and I'm happy to say all gold is present and accounted for."Built in 1936, the Fort Knox Bullion Depository is a highly fortified vault adjacent to the U.S. Army post in Fort Knox, Kentucky. According to the U.S. Mint (3), the facility currently holds 147.3 million ounces of gold, doesn't allow visitors and has only removed "very small quantities" of bullion for purity testing during audits.But Fort Knox holds only part of America's gold reserves."The U.S. has the largest pile of gold in the world — over $1 trillion at current market value," Bessent added.The U.S. does hold more gold than any other country. But while the metal remains in government vaults, it no longer backs the dollars Americans carry in their wallets.That became clear when Watters asked Bessent about framed displays of earlier U.S. currencies hanging on the wall."These are the displays of our currency over the years. We used to have silver certificates. We used to be backed by silver, sometimes gold. And then in the '70s, we just went to what was called fiat currency — where you didn't have to keep gold or silver in the vault," Bessent explained.For decades after World War II, the dollar sat at the center of the Bretton Woods monetary system. Foreign governments could exchange U.S. dollars for gold at a fixed price of $35 an ounce, requiring Washington to maintain enough bullion to support confidence in the currency.That arrangement ended in August 1971, when President Richard Nixon closed the "gold window" and stopped foreign central banks from converting dollars into U.S. gold. The move ended the dollar's last official tie to gold and marked the beginning of today's fiat system, where the currency is backed by the "full faith and credit" of the U.S. government rather than a fixed amount of gold.Terms and Privacy PolicyEU DSA contactPrivacy & Cookie SettingsMore Info