BullionVault, a physical market for gold and silver investors, has reported that its gold bullion holdings have smashed the 30-tonne mark for the first time – a figure which at current prices has a worth of over £1 billion ($1.5 billion) and which the firm says outweighs that of many large countries’ central banks' reserves.

Gold prices may have come “off the boil” as it were, having fallen by 15 per cent from last summer’s record levels, but BullionVault suggests that actually savvy investors are using this decline as a chance to build up their holdings against a backdrop of continued economic uncertainty.

In fact, last month Coutts came out to say that at its lowered price gold is offering good value and remains an important hedge at a time when the outlooks for inflation, currency levels and sovereign debt in developed economies appear unstable.

Investors are evidently unperturbed by the fact that the yellow metal offers no yield in such uncertain times and central banks have been buying it to the extent of 80 tonnes so far in 2012, the firm noted. The first quarter also saw the largest-ever purchase volume of gold in the retail market in China.

BullionVault has now been used by close to 40,000 private investors in physical gold and silver – an impressive rise of 50 per cent on 2011 – and the service’s typical user owns £10,000-worth of bullion.

BullionVault recently launched an iPhone app through which clients can transact in physical gold and silver.

The app gives live real-time and historical gold and silver chart and instant pricing from BullionVault's physical gold and silver markets, while users can trade within seconds of downloading the app. Investors in more than 100 nations have so far downloaded it.