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Comment by berkes | Hacker News Reader

> As the price of gold continued to rise as they did this,

Seems counterintuitive to me. This would only make gains when they bought the new gold before selling the old, or when there's some arbitrage going on between Gold/USD, Gold/EUR and USD/EUR.

If they first sold the old for USD, then bought the new for USD, with a rising gold price, they'd miss the price-gain during the time between the trades, when they held the USD. It'd be a loss, not a gain.

If there's some arbitrage going on, then I highly doubt that brings $15B gain. The differences would have to be huge.

I think the (author (AI)) writing that article is simply mixing up stuff. I think this gain is not a cause-effect of the conversion, merely the gains from rising gold prices on the gold it holds over that period.

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The source is a press conference where they state the total amount and total value of gold stored hasn't changed. In le figaro they report the profit is due to variation in price between the different transactions. Which seems to be a polite way to say they took exceptional risk.

They repatriated 129 tonnes in total, its was absolutely impossible to make $15B from that since that’s what 129 tonnes are worth in total more or less.

They didn't repatriate the gold in the sense of physically moving it from the US to France. Instead, they sold the gold that was held in the US and used the money raised to buy gold from other sources, which is held in France.

Different gold, and two financial transactions, accounts for the financial gain.

Yes but the article implies that they somehow made 15B in profit by selling the gold in US and buying an equivalent amount which can’t be the case.

What happened was that

a) they bought the gold long time ago for basically nothing and had it on their books valued at basically nothing

b) they sold it now (in the US) for around $15b and thus for accounting purposes realised a $15b gain

c) they bought it back (in France) for around $15b and will have it on the book now valued at $15b.

The fact that the gold price rose over the course of b) selling and c) buying doesn't matter (despite what the article implies). That the gold price rose between a) the original purchase and now b)c), that's what resulted in the profit.

> In le figaro they report the profit is due to variation in price between the different transactions. Which seems to be a polite way to say they took exceptional risk.

Nah it's just regular realized gain (delta between acquisition price and selling price).

https://www.banque-france.fr/fr/actualites/resultats-2025-de...

(so it's kinda irrelevant, it's just they have to put it in their books)

Well they has 129 tonnes in US which happens to be wroth around $15B or so. Probably the author has no clue what they are talking about and grossly misinterpreted..

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