At some point, cheap energy pushes the price of gold to zero doesn’t it? They already know how to manufactured I’ve heard.
Discussion
In the theoretical extreme where humans could go and mine asteroids after exhausting the terrestrial supply, yes
“While creating gold in a lab is scientifically possible, it could be more practical. The energy cost to run a particle accelerator is enormous, and the amount of gold produced is minuscule. At current energy prices, producing just one ounce of gold costs billions of dollars. As such, extracting gold from natural sources is much more efficient.”
Haha yeah I wonder if anyone has done the math on that, like how low would the cost of energy actually have to be to make transmutation economically viable? Are we talking like a Dyson sphere?