For four years running, central banks around the world have been buying gold at a steady, elevated pace.

We sat down with Joe Cavatoni, Senior Market Strategist at the World Gold Council, to find out why.

The World Gold Council collects data across every corner of the gold market – jewelry, technology, mining supply, investment flows, and, increasingly, the reserve holdings of central banks themselves.

And according to Cavatoni, that last category has become one of the more persistent stories in the market…

Central banks have made up roughly 20% to 25% of overall annual gold demand for four consecutive years now, as they look to diversify away from fiat currencies and traditional reserve assets like treasuries.

Investors, both in the West and in Asia, have been doing something similar with their own portfolios – and Cavatoni says that’s become the other major driver of demand.

Gold, as he put it, isn’t just about jewelry or technology anymore. It’s savings… diversification… safe haven.

We also asked him about the road ahead for interest rates under new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh, who Cavatoni says has been direct about where his focus lies. With unemployment relatively contained, the bigger concern is inflation – driven in part by the fallout from the Iran conflict and its effect on oil and commodity prices, along with lingering supply chain disruption and tariff uncertainty.

Cavatoni expects rate cut expectations to stay on hold over the next six to twelve months, with more clarity likely once Warsh speaks at Jackson Hole in September.

The conversation also covers:

• Why central bank gold buying has become a four-year trend, not a one-off
• What’s driving both Eastern and Western investor demand for gold right now
• Why Cavatoni believes official inflation figures may not reflect what people are actually experiencing at the pump and the grocery store

Cavatoni has spent more than three decades in financial services, including as a managing director at BlackRock overseeing iShares Capital Markets for the Americas. He joined the World Gold Council in 2016 and now leads the organization’s U.S. business strategy, including its ETF platform.