00:00Gold jewelry, gold skin care, and even gold-coated food.
00:05The allure of gold is nothing new,
00:09but the precious metal is the most expensive it's ever been.
00:14This is one kilo of gold.
00:1520 years ago, it was worth $11,000,
00:18and today, $63,000.
00:22Gold has been on a meteoric rise since 2024,
00:26and the price has hit record highs several times this year.
00:30But this modern-day gold rush
00:31isn't just pushing everyday people to buy gold bars.
00:35It's led to consequences in Africa's gold-rich nations.
00:40Foreign mining companies have moved in
00:42to extract the resource to meet the growing demand.
00:46They destroy the land.
00:47They turn the soil over.
00:49Nothing can grow there.
00:51So what exactly is making gold more expensive than ever,
00:55and how do the economic decisions of the U.S.
00:58affect communities 6,000 miles away?
01:03The relationship between humans and gold
01:06dates back thousands of years.
01:08The Lydians were the first to use gold
01:10as currency around 700 B.C.
01:14Over the following centuries,
01:16other civilizations adopted it too,
01:18cementing gold's reputation as a global symbol of wealth.
01:22In the U.S., gold mining captured the imagination
01:25during the gold rush of 1849,
01:28as people flocked to San Francisco
01:30in search of buried treasure.
01:32In 1900, the U.S. officially adopted the gold standard,
01:36a system that established a fixed price of gold in U.S. dollars.
01:40Although the U.S. abandoned the gold standard in 1971,
01:44gold has always represented material value.
01:48It's been used for thousands of years as a transfer of wealth
01:53and a very widely respected way to move value
01:57from one place to another.
01:59Today, gold is often considered a safe haven asset.
02:03When markets get shaky, people often turn to it
02:06to keep their wealth safe.
02:08In normal years, gold only appreciates a regular
02:12small kind of percentage per year.
02:15But when things get kind of hairy,
02:17that's when you start to see real run-ups and spikes
02:19in the price of gold.
02:21Take the years following the 2008 financial crisis,
02:24for example.
02:26As the stock market was spiraling,
02:28gold prices jumped 13% in 2009,
02:3227% in 2010,
02:34and 33% in 2011.
02:37Gold prices dropped by about 45% when the economy recovered
02:41between 2011 and 2015.
02:44But COVID-19 sparked another economic downturn in 2020,
02:48causing prices to grow 25% and surpass $2,000 an ounce
02:53for the first time in history.
02:56More recently, on April 2, 2025,
02:58the day President Donald Trump announced his tariff plan,
03:02the markets reacted almost immediately.
03:05Apple's stock fell more than 7%,
03:08Tesla's by more than 6%,
03:10and Amazon's by more than 5%.
03:13But gold?
03:14It was trading higher on the commodities market.
03:18Even though the stock market has recovered since April,
03:20Goldman Sachs predicts gold will hit a record
03:23of $3,700 per ounce by the end of 2025,
03:28as people and central banks flock to it for security.
03:32Now it seems everyone wants to get their hands
03:35on a gold bar.
03:36And one retailer is helping meet the demand.
03:39Costco has been cashing in on the gold craze.
03:41They are selling out within hours.
03:43People are buying these up to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
03:48It's been a fascinating place to watch Costco sort of explore this market
03:53and has built a real niche community of collectors.
03:57Costco has been selling gold bars and coins to its members since 2023.
04:02If you want to own a little bit of gold,
04:05the best way to start is with a bar like this.
04:09Demand for them has become so high that in May 2025,
04:12the retailer started limiting its customers to one bar at a time.
04:17I came across an individual who said that they had paid for,
04:20they had bought some $30,000 worth of gold from Costco this year alone.
04:27Jewelers have also seen an increase in demand.
04:30Michael Lippman and his cousin Gary run this store in New Jersey.
04:33In recent months, they've seen 20% more people coming in trying to sell old jewelry.
04:39Nice to meet you. Please sit.
04:41Let's see what you got.
04:42Okay.
04:43Well, gold is so high now. It's such a great time to sell.
04:46I remember when it was $40 an ounce back in the day.
04:50You know what's great is people typically come in expecting to get,
04:55I don't know, a few hundred dollars.
04:57And now you can walk out with thousands of dollars.
05:00Wow. And it's really nice, especially if you need the money.
05:04So your price for this is $1,247.
05:07Wow.
05:09Isn't that nice?
05:10I didn't expect that.
05:12Because where was this in your house?
05:13This was in a drawer in the back of a sock drawer.
05:18There's also a rush to mine gold from electronic waste.
05:23So this gold bar that I'm holding in my hands is about 1.2, 1.3 kilos.
05:29And that's the amount of gold that this facility is recovering each day.
05:34When we published the story in early 2024, that bar was worth $85,000.
05:40More than a year later, it's worth about $135,000.
05:44Whenever a commodity like gold is in very high demand,
05:47that automatically starts to drive up interest in extraction of that commodity
05:53from the countries where it's produced.
05:56Countries like Liberia.
05:58An estimated 3 million ounces of gold lie deep beneath its lush forests.
06:04Mining dramatically increased here in 2008 because of the U.S. financial crisis.
06:10Liberia's gold production more than doubled that year.
06:14Now, foreign mining companies from places like Turkey, the U.K. and Canada are moving in to extract more.
06:23This means more competition for locals who'd been mining at a smaller scale.
06:28Alex Duru has been mining gold for nearly half of his life.
06:33I saw my brothers doing the mining at the time I was small.
06:38When I got mature, I gained the money.
06:41Alex mines both independently and for hire with mining companies.
06:46Today, he's working with a team of 29 other independent miners.
06:51They rely on basic tools.
06:54We don't have machines.
06:55We don't have holes.
06:56We dig our shovel.
06:58All those things we are passing through here.
07:00No working materials.
07:03With the tools they have, it takes a week to reach the layer of sediment that contains gold deposits.
07:08Some places carry eight feet.
07:11Some places carry nine feet hash.
07:13We got about four more days to get on the gravel.
07:16Then we can be able to wash.
07:18Alex and his team wash the sediment through a tool called a sluice box,
07:22which is lined with a carpet-like fabric that catches the gold.
07:26As water and sediment pass through, the heavier gold sinks into the carpet while lighter materials wash away.
07:33The carpet is receiving the gold.
07:36Then from there, we take our time to do the processing.
07:40Some miners illegally use chemicals like mercury during the washing process.
07:46The mercury acts like a magnet, binding the gold particles and making it easier to separate from the sediment.
07:52But the toxic chemical can seep into rivers and waterways,
07:56and cause skin and respiratory issues, neurological damage, and in some cases, death.
08:02So Alex and his team don't use it.
08:06What's left behind is the miner's small fortune of the day.
08:10Two grams of gold.
08:12Some of the gravel you wash, you get two grand.
08:15Some there you get 1.5.
08:17Some there you get three grand.
08:19This amount was worth about US$159 at the time of filming.
08:24But when foreign competition comes in, gold-rich communities often bear the burden.
08:30In November 2024, a Chinese-owned company, Hong Tu Mining, signed a five-year agreement with the community leaders in Boos Town to set up gold mining operations.
08:40George Brownell Jr. first spotted the site a month earlier while flying his drone over Matthouse, a small village two miles from Boos Town.
08:50When the drone pans to the right of the campsite, you start seeing the mark of the excavators.
08:56So I have some before shots of Matthouse prior to the mining.
09:02You see all the forest.
09:05This is what the body of water used to look like.
09:09You see people bathing.
09:11When he flew his drone over the area four months later, the landscape was unrecognizable.
09:17How fast the environment changed, it just took me by surprise.
09:22Because gold is highly dense, it settles near waterways once erosion breaks down gold-bearing rock.
09:29This means rivers, streams, and other bodies of water are most at risk from large-scale mining.
09:36Liberia's Environmental Protection Agency said Hong Tu violated the country's environmental protocols by diverting and polluting the local river.
09:45I've not physically seen people in that brown water bathing, washing clothes, and people actually attempting to boil the water to use it for cooking.
09:55Locals also accused the foreign-owned company of using heavy machinery like excavators near their farms, allegedly causing deforestation and soil erosion that made it more difficult to grow their food.
10:08Prior to this, you know, a lot of people were involved in agriculture.
10:11They were doing small-scale mining. Now, they don't have anywhere to get that dilly bread from.
10:17In March 2025, George and several Mat House residents sent a letter of complaint to Liberia's Ministry of Mines and Energy, asking for intervention to stop Hong Tu's operations.
10:30And what's their response?
10:32There was no response.
10:33Nothing?
10:34No response.
10:35They couldn't listen to us because we don't have the power. They say we don't get the power to stop them.
10:40You have no drink some of that water, like a quick water while people on our side drinking. You have no drink, it brings harm to you.
10:48All of them. All of them are in the convention. They are interested. They're not there for the silly things. They're there for their children and their wives.
10:56Nothing we can achieve on the people. One person just sitting down there enjoying the morning because I don't know.
11:06So George filmed and produced a short documentary and published it on Instagram.
11:11The company, the king, they say the king don't help us, but the king don't kill us.
11:18Before they work on our creek, they were going to give us safe drinking water. Yes, we agree.
11:29Since that time, the company refused to give us safe drinking water and they damaged all our drinking water.
11:34They using mercury on the water, the first-class mercury.
11:38There was a ton of people in the diaspora just sharing the video. People were outraged about it.
11:43After the documentary was posted, Liberia's EPA fined the company $40,000 and reportedly confiscated all of Hongtu's conjureband materials, effectively shutting down its operations.
11:58Hongtu was also required to hire an environmental firm to create a plan to restore Matt House to its pre-mining condition.
12:10Still, Hongtu's mining left a lasting scar on the community.
12:15They destroy the land. There is no way for us to make all our tini.
12:19Even to make kasawa fin, no way. They turn the soil ore. Nothing can grow there.
12:24I see it as a form of exploitation.
12:27And the community never really benefited from any of the mining that they did over here.
12:32Liberia isn't the only African country feeling the effects of gold mining.
12:37Reports have found that mercury and other toxins have polluted about 60% of Ghana's freshwater sources.
12:44In October 2024, hundreds of people in Ghana marched through the capital city protesting illicit mining.
12:51We should make sure that we are mining and then we are not spoiling our environment.
12:55We are not entering into our forest reserves and then we are not contaminating our water.
13:00Liberian officials say they are trying to prevent further damage from gold mining.
13:05While the locals in Matt House that we talked to worried that the government won't do enough to change things.
13:11Either way, the gold boom is sparking more illegal mining, making oversight more difficult.
13:18Most of the resources that have been identified as world-class mines or economically viable mines in Liberia are located in these really hard to reach areas, in these remote jungles.
13:33Geraldine Bass launched a mining company in 2019 after graduating from Pennsylvania State University in the U.S.
13:41It takes a lot of resources to get just one field agent to a remote area.
13:47In case of an emergency where the EPA has to really go and monitor something, it might take weeks for just one field agent to get out there.
13:55People are fully aware that when they come here, there is virtually no oversight.
14:01Liberia's EPA launched a five-year plan to improve environmental management and encourage sustainable mining.
14:08It includes setting up offices in all 15 counties of Liberia to oversee mining operations and address local environmental issues.
14:16The government of Liberia is trying their best, I would say. I've been working under two administrations now ever since I've been mining in Liberia.
14:25And they've been getting better. It's just very difficult.
14:31As Liberia struggles to regulate its mining industry, concerns are growing over how much gold remains to be mined.
14:40Geologists estimate that 50,000 tons of gold lie under Earth's crust.
14:47If global mining rates continue, scientists believe there could be no more gold left to mine by 2050.
14:55Its rarity will likely make gold even more expensive.
15:10F
15:32Recording
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