Just watched Peter Schiff speaking about bitcoin and gold and found how deep is he in his delusion.
The main argument against gold and other precious metals is
that they can be synthesized.
As soon as humanity discover cheap way to produce enormous amounts of energy (i.e. fusion), gold/platinum/palladium will be produced from cheap sources like mercury by a process called "transmutation".
I guess in 20-30 years gold will completely lost its value and become just another industrial metal.
The same has already happened with DIAMONDS which can be cheaply produced by chemical reaction. The only reason they are still expensive is repressive regulation by monopolies such as De Beers which prohibit free circulation of synthetic diamonds.
In opposite, the generation of bitcoins cannot be accelerated at all, and, to crack private key it won't be enough the whole energy generated by our Sun for all the time it exists.
It is possible in particle accelerators or nuclear reactors, although the production cost is currently many times the market price of gold. Since there is only one stable gold isotope, 197Au, nuclear reactions must create this isotope in order to produce usable gold.
Gold synthesis in an accelerator
Gold synthesis in a particle accelerator is possible in many ways. The Spallation Neutron Source has a liquid mercury target which will be transmuted into gold, platinum, and iridium, which are lower in atomic number than gold.[citation needed]
Gold synthesis in a nuclear reactor
Gold was synthesized from mercury by neutron bombardment in 1941, but the isotopes of gold produced were all radioactive.[12] In 1924, a Japanese physicist, Hantaro Nagaoka, accomplished the same feat.[13]
Gold can currently be manufactured in a nuclear reactor by irradiation either of platinum or mercury.
Only the mercury isotope 196Hg, which occurs with a frequency of 0.15% in natural mercury, can be converted to gold by slow neutron capture, and following electron capture, decay into gold's only stable isotope, 197Au. Other mercury isotopes are converted when irradiated with slow neutrons into one another, or formed mercury isotopes which beta decay into thallium.
Using fast neutrons, the mercury isotope 198Hg, which composes 9.97% of natural mercury, can be converted by splitting off a neutron and becoming 197Hg, which then disintegrates to stable gold. This reaction, however, possesses a smaller activation cross-section and is feasible only with un-moderated reactors.
It is also possible to eject several neutrons with very high energy into the other mercury isotopes in order to form 197Hg. However such high-energy neutrons can be produced only by particle accelerators.[clarification needed].
In 1980, Glenn Seaborg transmuted several thousand atoms of bismuth into gold at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. His experimental technique, using nuclear physics, was able to remove protons and neutrons from the bismuth atoms. Seaborg's technique would have been far too expensive to enable the routine manufacture of gold, however
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals#Gold_synthesis_in_an_acceleratorSynthetic diamond (also known as laboratory-created diamond, laboratory-grown diamond, cultured diamond or cultivated diamond) is diamond produced in an artificial process, as opposed to natural diamonds, which are created by geological processes. Synthetic diamond is also widely known as HPHT diamond or CVD diamond after the two common production methods (referring to the high-pressure high-temperature and chemical vapor deposition crystal formation methods, respectively).
Gem-quality diamonds grown in a lab can be chemically, physically and optically identical (and sometimes superior) to naturally occurring ones. The mined diamond industry has undertaken legal, marketing and distribution countermeasures to protect its market from the emerging presence of synthetic diamonds.
Souce:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond
