US Abandons Gold Standard After Nixon's August 1971 Decision

The United States abandoned its gold standard on August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon announced that the country would temporarily suspend the convertibility of the dollar into gold for foreign governments and central banks.

This decision marked a turning point in modern financial history, paving the way for the world's most important currency to become a fiat currency, no longer backed by a fixed quantity of gold.

At the time, the official U.S. price of gold was $35 an ounce, but today gold futures trade around $4,383 an ounce, a more than 125-fold increase compared to the Bretton Woods era.