RE:Office of the Comptroller So the info on page 43 of this link shows in Q1 an upward explosion of $463.17 billion of notional gold held with American banks with a maturity of less than 1 year, and an additional $28.4 billion large uptick with 1-5 year maturity. Based on what's going on in the world, I suspect these derivatives are nearly all contracts to buy gold. So here's the kicker, these notional gold contracts represent very close to 10,000 tons of gold. This amount is greater than held in the vaults of the U.S. government. It's 3x the annual global gold production. So here's the kicker, what if an unusual surge of these contracts are eventually exercised for physical delivery. This is but one more reason why they strive to continually manipulate and manage the entire ball of wax, day in day out.