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Topic: GOLD can now be made in laboratories and what it means for bitcoins - page 2. (Read 3660 times)

donator
Activity: 1617
Merit: 1012
We need someone to build a blockchain collider. Then we're in business.
hero member
Activity: 742
Merit: 502
Circa 2010
@OP: The title you have is misleading - Gold can no more be produced by bacteria than I can from my crap. Unless you are completing transmutation in a nuclear reactor or the heart of a star you cannot create new amounts of an element. At the moment the cost is so great that it isn't worth it so there will be little change to the end supply of gold meaning that it won't affect Bitcoin in any way.
sr. member
Activity: 266
Merit: 250
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.

People here seem to have a lack of knowledge about chemistry. The bacteria are just separating the Au atoms from the AuCl solution. IT is not MAKING Au atoms out of thin air
full member
Activity: 146
Merit: 101
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.
legendary
Activity: 952
Merit: 1005
--Signature Designs-- http://bit.ly/1Pjbx77
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.
newbie
Activity: 25
Merit: 0
i think the amount of gold produced by this bacteria is next to miniscule.
legendary
Activity: 4424
Merit: 4794
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.

legendary
Activity: 1918
Merit: 1570
Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
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...
hero member
Activity: 770
Merit: 500
Until they find strands of bacteria that can perform nuclear fusion, gold bugs can sleep peacefully.
legendary
Activity: 1358
Merit: 1000
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.
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 1895
...

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/
member
Activity: 70
Merit: 10
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.
legendary
Activity: 2114
Merit: 1040
A Great Time to Start Something!
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.
full member
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
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.
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 1895
...

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.   Smiley

...
member
Activity: 70
Merit: 10
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.
hero member
Activity: 740
Merit: 501
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.
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 1895
...

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.

Smiley

EDIT: as "acoindr" just wrote!
legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1002
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 Wink

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals#Gold_synthesis_in_an_accelerator
full member
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
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!
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