cross-posted from: https://futurology.today/post/5004513
Diamond prices are down 60% since a 2011 high, and they are still falling. It’s not all down to lab-grown diamonds, demand is down too, especially in China.
No one can lab-grow gold yet, so its rarity and scarcity protect its value, but that will end too. It’s just a question of when. China launched an asteroid touch-down mission this week, which will make it the 4th country/region to do so, after Europe, the US & Japan.
How soon will it be feasible to mine asteroids? Who knows, but a breakthrough in space propulsion might mean the prospect happens quickly when it does. It’s possible gold has twenty years or less of being high value left.
The $80 Billion Diamond Market Crash Leaves De Beers Reeling
Absolutely not, but nuclear transmutation is at least a thing that already exists unlike asteroid mining. One of the problems is that gold has exactly one stable isotope, Au-197. So there are a lot of means to induce nuclear fusion to make other elements into gold, but I think only one method so far (the large hadron collider) has made stable isotopes.
Maybe China can do something cool once they finish building their 100km electron/positron collider.