While this price rise was driven by gold traders, it begs the question about the supply of the precious metal, and when it will eventually run out.

Gold mine production totalled 3,531 tonnes in 2019, 1% lower than in 2018, according to the World Gold Council. This is the first annual decline in production since 2008.

The volume of gold reserves can be calculated more accurately than resources, although this is still not an easy task.

The below-ground stock of gold reserves is currently estimated to be around 50,000 tonnes, according to the US Geological Survey.

New technologies may make it possible to extract some known reserves that aren’t currently economical to access.

The most recent innovations include big data, AI, and smart data mining, which can potentially optimise processes and bring down costs.

Robotics are already being used at some sites, and are expected to increasingly become standard technologies in mine exploration.

China is currently the world’s biggest miner of gold, while Canada, Russia, and Peru are also major producers.

Though new gold mines are still being found, discoveries of large deposits are becoming increasingly rare, experts say.

As a result, most gold production currently comes from older mines that have been in use for decades.

Unlikely places

While gold in the ground may be hard to quantify, it’s not the only source. There is also gold on the moon.

However, the costs associated with mining it and transporting it back to earth are significantly higher than the value of the gold.

Similarly, there are some known gold deposits in Antarctica that may never be economical to mine, due to the continent’s extreme weather conditions.

Gold is also scattered along the ocean floor, but is also considered uneconomic to mine.

One factor gold has on its side though is that, unlike other non-renewable resources like oil, it can be recycled. So we will never run out of gold, even when we can no longer mine it.

A large amount of gold is used in electronic products that are widely viewed as disposable, such as mobile phones. The amount of gold in the average phone is worth a few pounds.

Efforts to recycle gold extracted from electronic waste are already well under way.