Name: The Gold Rush East: Inside Singapore’s Fort Knox
Uploaded: 2025-11-25T17:00:00Z
Duration: 6 min 38 s
Description: After gold prices surge to a record high, WSJ gets rare access inside one of the world’s largest bullion vaults–part of Singapore’s drive to become a global gold hub.

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After gold prices surge to a record high, WSJ gets rare access inside one of the world’s largest bullion vaults–part of Singapore’s drive to become a global gold hub. Photo: Lee Beng Seng

https://m.wsj.net/video/20251125/cd2b05e9-0a76-43c1-849b-65ea8e2cdd44/3/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

After gold prices surge to a record high, WSJ gets rare access inside one of the world’s largest bullion vaults–part of Singapore’s drive to become a global gold hub.

The Gold Rush East: Inside Singapore’s Fort Knox

Demand for gold is surging, recently sending prices past $4,000 per troy ounce for the first time. In times of uncertainty, investors reach for gold, but this time it's not just about buying more of it. The wealthy are rethinking where they stash their treasure. Away from traditional vaults in London and Geneva and East to new hubs like Singapore. That brings us here, inside some of the most secure private vaults in the world. This might look like just a warehouse, but it's a super sophisticated, highly securitized storage facility. Here at The Reserve, security isn't just set in concrete, it's built into the country itself.

Singapore really doesn't have enemies in the world, makes it a very good long-term storage location.

Hannah: For many wealthy clients, peace of mind matters just as much as profit. And geopolitical unrest combined with global economic uncertainty is one reason many are choosing to look eastward.

Singapore is a wealthy jurisdiction. They will not have an incentive to nationalize gold in the future. It is a jurisdiction which makes that wealth through building confidence with clients. So for Singapore to nationalize something will be economic suicide essentially. And thirdly, Singapore is very well defended and that combination of these three factors means that it's an ideal location to store wealth intergenerationally with 20, 30, 40 year timeframes. So traditionally our clients are people coming from Europe, from the United States, from Australia. It's mostly Western English speaking clients. A lot of them tend to be entrepreneurs, people who made their own companies and are in charge of their own wealth management.

Hannah: Gregersen founded The Reserve to meet the growing demand for high-end facilities to store gold and other precious metals like silver. This vault was completed in 2024 and is located near Singapore's Changi Airport. It includes a towering chamber that can store up to 10,000 tons of silver worth about $16 billion.

Important part is the foundation, which is going 32 meters into the ground to distribute this kind of weight. A 90 kilonewton floor loading means that it's about 45 times stronger than a car park.

Hannah: As a response to the soaring demand for precious metals, both gold and silver prices reached record highs in October with silver topping $53 a troy ounce and gold going beyond $4,300 per troy ounce. Because gold is much smaller in size and more valuable than silver, it needs to be stored in a place with an even higher level of security. And while vaults like The Reserve might evoke movies like "Oceans 11" or "The Italian Job", real security is less like Hollywood. It's quieter, layered, and designed to stop threats long before they get close.

What insurance companies want to see is a UL Class 2 gold vault standard, and that's essentially a vaulting standard, which is defined in such a way that it will keep somebody out for one hour. And that's important in the context of vault security because you have a delay element. Yeah, so this is our main gold vault right now, and you will see these safe deposit box-like containers. And we are doing this because that is the most efficient way of storing gold in a way that makes it easily retrievable.

Hannah: The Reserve has the capacity to store up to 500 tons of gold worth about $64 billion. That's roughly 40,000 good delivery bars. The standardized size major traders and central banks use when dealing gold. Each one of those weigh about 400 troy ounces and costs about $1.6 million. But it's common for investors to break this up into smaller bars, which weigh about 32 troy ounces each worth about $128,000. For many investors, gold bars like these have become a refuge from political turmoil and shifting economic winds, especially in Washington.

Reciprocal tariffs on countries throughout the world. Reciprocal.

Hannah: Gregersen said mistrust in governments is also driving investors to store their wealth overseas. And in The Reserve, Gregersen is seeing more and more American clients.

At some point, the trust in the US dollar might falter. When that happens, the country will have to find something that people can trust back a new currency, and that is traditionally gold. And so a lot of our clients are looking at these sort of potential developments happening, and they're saying, maybe I don't keep all of my gold in the US. Maybe I keep it somewhere else.

Hannah: Many investors also choose physical gold instead of funds or futures to avoid counterparty risk, the chance a bank or a firm managing their investment might default. It's kind of like lending money to a friend and you're trusting they'll pay you back. But as the 2008 financial crisis showed, even trusted institutions like banks can fail to keep that promise.

In 2008, you didn't know which big bank was going to fail next. In an environment like this, you start saying that maybe the numbers I see on my screen aren't really that meaningful anymore tomorrow. Therefore, it makes sense to have a physical gold bar, and the physical gold bar you can own as private property.

Hannah: The quiet and understated stability of Singapore seems a million miles away from the chaos of 2008. And while it still handles only a small share of global gold holdings, Gregersen believes that's about to change.

There's about well over $100 billion worth of gold being traded daily in London. Singapore is not even 1% of that, but I expect that gold hubs such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and probably Dubai, have the right elements and the governments are wanting to develop it.

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