Will gold’s ‘infinite mint bug’ make Bitcoin more valuable?
A US fusion startup says it has turned mercury into gold. Could a potential increase in the gold supply strengthen Bitcoin’s claim to be a better form of digital gold?
They say all that glitters is not gold, and that took on a completely different meaning this month when a US fusion startup claimed it had produced gold from mercury.
Rather than chemical trickery, Marathon Fusion’s process relies on nuclear transmutation. Its research paper describes how high-energy neutrons from a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction can irradiate mercury-198, producing a radioactive isotope that decays into stable gold-197.
So, if gold has what some are calling an “infinite mint bug,” what will happen to the centuries-old metal so revered for its scarcity? And what, if anything, could that mean for Bitcoin as digital gold given it has a hard-capped supply?