Garlinghouse: 70% of DNB’s $11B gold transfer was ‘paper’

De Nederlandsche Bank moved about 86 tonnes of gold to London between March and August, with shipments originating from New York and Ottawa. The bank sold roughly 59 tonnes in New York and bought the same amount back in London, meaning about 70% of the operation consisted of paper sales and repurchases rather than physical shipments. Only about 27 tonnes actually changed location. New York’s share of Dutch reserves fell to 18.5% from 31.3%, while London’s rose to 32.1%. DNB holds 612.4 tonnes of gold in total, valued at about €72.2 billion at the end of 2025.

DNB presented the relocation as a step to improve readiness for crisis conditions and to make reserves easier to trade. Governor Olaf Sleijpen wrote: “With this relocation, we have improved the tradability of our gold reserves. We expect that we will never need to use them, but we do need to strengthen our resilience and preparedness.” Sleijpen noted that London handles far more physical gold trade than Ottawa.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse criticized the operation on social media, writing: “A good reminder on how finance still works today… the Central Bank of Netherlands just spent months moving $11B in gold from New York to London. ~70% of it never actually left the ground.” He cited Germany’s 2013 repatriation, when the Bundesbank took four years to return 674 tonnes of gold.

Garlinghouse contrasted those settlement mechanics with developments in digital-assets markets, noting the sector’s growth from an early $1.5 billion experiment to roughly $2.7 trillion. He argued that tokenized assets and stablecoins can enable faster clearing and near-instant settlement than correspondent banking.

Central institutions are testing distributed-ledger tools. The Bank for International Settlements ran a prototype on the XRP Ledger that anchored official statistics in three to five seconds, with verification in one to two seconds. SWIFT activated a blockchain-based ledger in July, while many final settlement steps still rely on legacy correspondent networks.

Market reaction was limited. XRP traded near $1.40 on the day the comments circulated, down about 3.65% intraday and up roughly 21% over the prior three months. Central banks continue to cite vaulting requirements, insurance arrangements and legal finality as constraints on holding tokenized reserve assets.