Gold at $5,000 and
Nobody Is Looking

Gold has risen 1,070% in twenty years. From roughly $450 per ounce in 2005 to $5,175 today, with an all-time high of $5,602 reached on January 28, 2026.¹ In any rational market, a signal this strong — sustained over two decades, accelerating in the final three years — should have triggered the largest exploration cycle in mining history.

It has not.

Global gold exploration spending declined 7% in 2024 to $5.6 billion.² In 2025, with gold surging 55%, total nonferrous exploration budgets still fell — down 1% to $12.4 billion.³ The number of major discoveries remained near zero.⁴ The industry that exists to find gold is, by most measurable indicators, finding less of it than at any point in the modern era.

This is the gold paradox. And it has consequences that extend far beyond mining.

The Price Signal

The gold market in 2025 was extraordinary by any historical standard. The metal set 53 new all-time highs during the year and delivered a 55% annual return.¹ January 2026 added another record at $5,602 per ounce.

Major investment banks are not calling a top. J.P. Morgan targets $6,300 by year-end 2026. Wells Fargo projects $6,100 to $6,300. Goldman Sachs, the most conservative of the three, forecasts $5,400.⁵

These projections are not based on speculative demand. They are based on structural shifts in who is buying gold and why.

The broader context reinforces the trend. The US dollar's share of global foreign exchange reserves has declined from 72% in 2001 to 58% in 2024.⁷ Global sovereign debt stands at 237% of GDP. US federal debt exceeds $38.4 trillion and grows at approximately $2.25 trillion per year.⁸

This is not speculative fever. These are sovereign treasuries restructuring their balance sheets against long-term currency risk.

The Exploration Response That Never Came

Against this backdrop, exploration spending should be surging. It is not.

Gold-specific exploration did edge higher in 2025 — to an estimated $6.0 to $6.2 billion — as gold's share of total budgets expanded to roughly 50%.³ But this modest increase was driven by strong cash flows from existing producers, not by new risk capital flowing into greenfield discovery.

The structural picture is worse than the headline numbers suggest. Because not all exploration spending is created equal.

There are two fundamentally different types of exploration. Greenfield — also called grassroots — is the search for genuinely new deposits in new areas. It is high-risk, high-reward, and it is the only activity that can add truly new supply to the global gold inventory. Brownfield — also called minesite exploration — extends known deposits at existing operations. Both have value, but only greenfield exploration can discover the next generation of gold mines.

The industry has overwhelmingly chosen brownfield.

In dollar terms: of the $12.5 billion spent on global exploration in 2024, grassroots received just $2.79 billion, while minesite exploration absorbed approximately $5.0 billion.⁹

The consequences are now visible in the discovery data. Between 2020 and 2024, the industry recorded only six major gold discoveries globally, totalling just 27 million ounces. The average size of new discoveries has declined 43% over the past decade, from 7.7 million ounces to 4.4 million ounces. None of the past ten years' discoveries rank among the 30 largest gold discoveries ever made.⁴ Not one.

The number of companies actively exploring for gold declined 8% in 2024 to 1,235.²

The Supply Cliff

The exploration deficit is not an abstract problem. It is a future production problem with a defined timeline.

Every ounce of gold produced today was discovered years or decades ago. The mine development cycle — from initial discovery to first gold pour — has extended from an average of 12.7 years to 17.9 years, a 41% increase.⁴ This means that even if a world-class deposit were discovered tomorrow, first production would not arrive until the early 2040s.

Existing operations are not immune. Ore grades are declining. Mines are pushing deeper. Processing costs are rising. The marginal cost of each additional ounce is increasing even as the easy ounces are depleted.

Global mine production grew from 2,520 tonnes in 2005 to 3,661 tonnes in 2024 — a compound annual growth rate of just 1.9%.⁶ That rate of growth is insufficient to meet structural demand increases from central banks, ETF investors, and industrial applications driven by semiconductor and AI hardware manufacturing.

What the Numbers Say

Consider the arithmetic. Central banks alone are purchasing 860 to 1,100 tonnes per year.⁶ Gold ETF holdings reached a record 4,025 tonnes in 2025, with net inflows of 801 tonnes.⁶ Industrial demand — increasingly driven by AI chip manufacturing — reached 326 tonnes in 2024, up 7% year-over-year.⁶

Total demand is rising. Total supply growth is structurally constrained. And the pipeline of future supply — the discoveries that would become tomorrow's mines — is thinner than it has been in decades.

The price signal is the loudest it has ever been. The question that follows is not whether the gap exists. The data is unambiguous. The question is why.

Why, at $5,000 gold, is the industry not drilling?