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> By the late 1960s, it was unmistakable that U.S. gold reserves, which had been falling relative to U.S. dollars since 1957, were inadequate to fund convertibility of dollars into gold at the fixed price of $35 an ounce.

> In August 1971, French president Pompidou sent a battleship to New York harbor to remove France’s gold from the vault of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and to transport it to the Banque de France in Paris. Soon thereafter, gold accounted for 92 percent of French reserves. On August 11, the British requested that the Treasury remove the $3 billion of gold from the U.S. depository of Fort Knox to the New York Federal Reserve vault, where the gold of foreign governments was stored. As Paul Volcker, who was then treasury undersecretary for monetary affairs, put it: “If the British, who had founded the system with us, and who had fought so hard to defend their own currency, were going to take gold for their dollars, it was clear the game was indeed over.” When Nixon spoke on August 15, 1971, the U.S. held less than 10,000 tons of gold, less than half of what it once had.

https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3545&context=faculty_scholarship

edit: as to why the USA has gold owned by foreign governments in the NY Federal Reserve vault: gold was moved to UK and then to NY from western EU countries because of WW2 to protect it. We also just had gold in the bank vault as part of international trade. You don't move gold across the ocean unless necessary; pirates will come for it, and it's too slow. It's easier to keep a bunch of gold in the bank of the country with whom you're trading with and have people juggle it between vaults when trades are made. Obviously this is incredibly inefficient and stupid. Buy Bitcoin.

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