I saw someone saying there's lots of gold because gold mines open all the time.
Mines being discovered all the time and gold being rare are not mutually exclusive.
A really good gold mine could have 10 grams of gold per ton of ore. You have to blast, transport, crush, grind, add chemicals, get the gold out, deal with the tailings, and you get less than a single ounce of gold. A lot of mines have closer to 1 gram per ton.
Considering that this is in places considered rich enough in gold to make a gold mine, that's rare.
In order to make enough oz to pay for everything, they need to dig up thousands, or maybe even tens of thousands of tons of ore every day.
The only reason any of that is possible is because gold is so absurdly expensive. The gold price per oz is similar to the copper price per ton, and copper is relatively rare too. A gold mine might have one in a million parts gold ore. A copper mine might have five in one hundred parts copper ore. An iron mine might have one in two parts iron ore.
Mines being discovered all the time and gold being rare are not mutually exclusive.
A really good gold mine could have 10 grams of gold per ton of ore. You have to blast, transport, crush, grind, add chemicals, get the gold out, deal with the tailings, and you get less than a single ounce of gold. A lot of mines have closer to 1 gram per ton.
Considering that this is in places considered rich enough in gold to make a gold mine, that's rare.
In order to make enough oz to pay for everything, they need to dig up thousands, or maybe even tens of thousands of tons of ore every day.
The only reason any of that is possible is because gold is so absurdly expensive. The gold price per oz is similar to the copper price per ton, and copper is relatively rare too. A gold mine might have one in a million parts gold ore. A copper mine might have five in one hundred parts copper ore. An iron mine might have one in two parts iron ore.
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