teleforceFrance pulls last gold held in US for $15B gain
https://www.mining.com/france-pulls-last-gold-held-in-us-for-15b-gain/
This is not gain at all. At least in theory: You own some tons of gold at the start of the process, you have the same tons of gold at the end of the process.
The only real gain is that you have gold in the US custody and the US can be tempted to just use it without telling you anything.
In other words, you had "paper gold" or "virtual gold" that the US can confiscate anytime, for example after invading Greenland, blackmailing France to do nothing.
You gain custody of what is yours.
As @somenameforme wrote:
[] they sold their 'non-standard' (seems to be bars below the modern purity standards) US reserves, and replaced them with new reserves purchased elsewhere which are now stored in France. As the price of gold continued to rise as they did this, they ended up making a bunch of dinero while also centralizing their reserves.
sounds like a gain to me.
When something is "realized" is a matter of accounting. It means to make the change, they sold the gold fo currrency, then bought it back. For many of us, realizing a gain is when taxes happen, though I'm not sure what it means for a nation state.