Gold as a Reserve Asset: Official-Sector Allocation and the Post-2022 Policy Shift

The freezing of roughly $300 billion in Russian central bank assets in early 2022 set a precedent with lasting consequences for reserve-management doctrine: sovereign reserves held in Western custodians carry a confiscation risk that gold held domestically does not. Central banks have responded at scale, buying more than 1,000 tonnes in each of the three years from 2022 through 2024, more than double the prior decade's average. Gold's share of aggregate official reserves has risen above 20% in value terms, while the dollar's disclosed share in IMF data has fallen toward its lowest since the mid-1990s. The PBOC's holdings have climbed past 2,300 tonnes. This report assesses the policy logic driving accumulation, the institutional constraints on further shifts, and the implications for gold's role in the monetary system.