GOLD can now be made in laboratories and what it means for bitcoins

[superduh]

not sure which forum to put it under so feel free to move it.

for the first time in history it is now possible to product 24k 99% pure gold using bacteria!!!!!!

the effective gold supply is not increased many times more.

what does this mean for gold bugs, what does it mean for people who say gold can't be "counterfeited", and what impact will this have on gold value being moved into bitcoins.

source:
http://gizmodo.com/5948739/researchers-discover-bacteria-that-can-produce-pure-gold

welcome to the new world! i've heard people say "people will never be able to produce gold"... well ...

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[CryptoDomains]

It means next to nothing and even the scientist admits that.

As for what a man made precious metal or stone would do to a real market, I suppose diamonds are extremely cheap now since they can be man made, right LOL

[superduh]

It means next to nothing and even the scientist admits that.

As for what a man made precious metal or stone would do to a real market, I suppose diamonds are extremely cheap now since they can be man made, right LOL

diamonds are a scam market. i'm sure pure man made gold will drive market prices for "real gold" down in many ways.. maybe not tomorrow but eventually.

i consider this to be more like when China began cultivating pearls driving the price of pearls down 90% scenario. what's the point of using Gold as store of value when anyone and their mom can make it. and 80%+ of gold's value is store of value.

[grifferz]

From the longer article at http://www.nature.com/news/gold-digging-bacterium-makes-precious-particles-1.12352 it sounds like the most they are hoping from here is to find a way to extract tiny amounts of pure gold from mining waste.

To me that sounds like it could end up being costlier than the conventional ways of finding gold for quite some time. If that is the case then this would have negligible effect on the price of gold — this method takes over once it becomes harder to mine gold conventionally.

It also sounds to me like it's got a good chance to being found completely impractical. Kind of like all those stories a decade ago about how people were going to sift the oceans to extract the trace amounts of gold and other precious materials. Only that was found to be vastly more effort than it was worth.

So it's interesting but I don't think any goldbugs should be dumping their hoards just yet!

[acoindr]

I don't think this is the alchemy it insinuates. Apparently the bacteria feed on gold chloride a compound of gold and chlorine. So it seems to me the bacteria act more as a gold filter than gold transformer, the gold being already there.

Kind of like all those stories a decade ago about how people were going to sift the oceans to extract the trace amounts of gold and other precious materials. Only that was found to be vastly more effort than it was worth.

Yes, as I understand a big (or the biggest?) source of the world's gold is in the oceans, but it's not very cost effective to extract. Now there is a way to turn an inexpensive compound which is not gold into gold. However, it's also not cost effective at today's prices and you need a nuclear reactor or particle accelerator to do it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals#Gold_synthesis_in_an_accelerator

[OROBTC]

...

Gold cannot be made by bacteria.  Sorry, bacteria do not add protons to a nucleus.  I am almost surprised to see such notions even being mentioned here, these "scientists", whatever they are doing (I did see one comment above about gold chloride being the feedstock for the process, uh, gold chloride).

Artificial diamonds will be a problem soon, though, for those looking to put money into diamonds.

Gold has a long bright future ahead of it.  Until they can extract gold from seawater (and there is not as much there as people think) and/or the energy requirements for changing some metals (lead?  mercury?) into gold become lowered by orders of magnitude, gold owners will be just fine.



EDIT: as "acoindr" just wrote!

[madmadmax]

I thought that they were able to produce gold for 10+ years already, just that the price to produce is significantly more expensive than mining it.

[skooter]

I thought that they were able to produce gold for 10+ years already, just that the price to produce is significantly more expensive than mining it.

Making gold is of trivial difficulty.

We have particle accelerators that have made much more difficult elements then gold.

The problem is it'll probably cost you 10K in electricity alone to make 1 atom of gold.

[OROBTC]

...

madmadmax, I do not think even at FOFOA's $55,000 / oz that it would be profitable to make gold out of other elements. 

Even if you take FOFOA's newer prediction of +/- $100,000 / oz, or "twoshortplanks" number of $133,000 would make it profitable. Read from the master himself:

fofoa.blogspot.com

Long & dense reading, tl;dr?  But serious gold people need to check out his stuff.  My suggestion?: start in October 2009.

Here's something to get you interested:



Note that the peak probability is $55,000 in non-hyperinflated dollars.   

...

[grifferz]

We have particle accelerators that have made much more difficult elements then gold.

The problem is it'll probably cost you 10K in electricity alone to make 1 atom of gold.

Maybe Butterfly Labs should advertise one for pre-order.

[Bit_Happy]

I thought that they were able to produce gold for 10+ years already, just that the price to produce is significantly more expensive than mining it.

Making gold is of trivial difficulty.

We have particle accelerators that have made much more difficult elements then gold.

The problem is it'll probably cost you 10K in electricity alone to make 1 atom of gold.

Amazingly BTC is heading in the same direction as mining diff keeps shooting higher.
Someday we will see huge mining farms using solar power, perhaps they will also create some gold.

[skooter]

Btw, according to wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals (at the bottom of the page)

The first gold synthesis (granted, it was a radioactive isotope) was in 1924.

I dunno when the first stable isotope synthesis was, but it was probably a long time ago and nothing new.

Extracting gold from seawater is also very real.

But none of those methods are cost effective.

It's kind of like buying the computing power to brute force a bitcoin private key. It's possible, but not worth it.

[OROBTC]

...

Bit_Happy

I read a few months ago about a company in ICELAND mining BTC using cheap geothermal energy there.  For cooling, they just have to open the roof and let all that cold air in...

I believe the same folks want to start a solar-powered plant (as you suggested) in Texas, see the second link below (both from Dec 2013):

http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-iceland-pool-2013-12

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/12/21/into-the-bitcoin-mines/

[Bitcoinpro]

thread title is bogus to actual content,, so should be deleted

and gold is over rated plenty of other metals will do the job

it has been used as a form of wealth storage but total value

of gold doesn't even come close to property, bitcoins

convertibility also trumps gold and other forms of currency

transfers by such a degree its not even worth comparing,

property transfers would be considered to slow also

though are used by companies to trade large sumes of

wealth so its not really the same market either.

[freequant]

Until they find strands of bacteria that can perform nuclear fusion, gold bugs can sleep peacefully.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

We have particle accelerators that have made much more difficult elements then gold.

The problem is it'll probably cost you 10K in electricity alone to make 1 atom of gold.

Maybe Butterfly Labs should advertise one for pre-order.

And, Brock Pierce can secure the VC. For marketing, invent a pseudonym like Wawaska Plutomi, having him pen a white paper...

[franky1]

guys please put facts into place.

no one can make gold. what this story about is detoxifying / cleaning the currently known dirty gold.

in other words, no big deal as the current 170k tonnes of gold will NOT become millions of tonnes in a few decades. it will stay around the same couple hundred thousand tonne amount, just that more % of that amount is now useful, rather than toxic.

[turtlerabbit]

i think the amount of gold produced by this bacteria is next to miniscule.

[medUSA]

These bacteria collect gold particles, they not make them. The title is misleading.

We have been throwing gold away bit by bit in our bins. Electronic products contains high percentage of gold in them. When they are discarded, the gold is lost. There is a gold recycling plant in Japan where they mined back those tiny traces of gold:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bU-NwowzVE

The bacteria can do just that, but in slower and smaller scale. May be in the future, we can buy prepackaged DIY gold extraction kits using enhanced generations of these microbes.

[jellyhashman]

I thought that they were able to produce gold for 10+ years already, just that the price to produce is significantly more expensive than mining it.

Making gold is of trivial difficulty.

We have particle accelerators that have made much more difficult elements then gold.

The problem is it'll probably cost you 10K in electricity alone to make 1 atom of gold.

and the odds are it will be radioactive.