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
I find the idea so dumb that we have a high value for a metal that objectively has few worthwhile uses. And because our folklore made up a high value from this. We’re gonna spend hella resources to extract it from fucking asteroids. Even tho it has no objective major value.
(Imagine how many people we could feed with those resources instead)
Gold mining is fairly expensive. According to this website, gold mining currently has a operating profit margin of 30%, while the average public company has an operating margin of 27%.
This lines up relatively well with this other dataset of US companies reporting 32% gross profit margins (go to the bottom of the page).
So it seems to me that gold mining isn’t really that “special” compared other commodities.
still one of humanity’s less stupid ideas, even so.
I totally get where you’re coming from—on the surface, it does seem absurd that so much effort, money, and even space tech is being directed toward chasing a shiny yellow metal that, in practical terms, doesn’t do much for human survival. It can’t feed us, shelter us, or cure disease. And yet, we’ve built entire economies and mythologies around it. But the strange part is, this isn’t unique to gold. It’s part of a much deeper pattern in human economic systems, especially in capitalism, where markets need some way to store and measure value—and that almost always leads societies to latch onto something rare, durable, and symbolic, whether it’s objectively useful or not.
In early societies, people used cowrie shells in the Pacific Islands, huge stone disks in Yap, salt in ancient Africa, and even tulip bulbs in the Dutch Republic. These weren’t chosen because they had immense utility, but because they were scarce, hard to replicate, and symbolically powerful. They allowed people to trade across time and space. Capitalism, being based on decentralized exchange, competition, and accumulation, basically demands a store of value that everyone can agree on—even if the object itself is more symbolic than practical. Gold just happens to check all the boxes: it’s rare, doesn’t tarnish, can be melted and divided, and most importantly, it’s extremely hard to counterfeit or mass-produce without massive energy investment.
If gold didn’t exist, we’d be doing the same thing with something else. In fact, that’s basically what happened with Bitcoin. People wanted a store of value outside the control of central banks, and they turned to something even more intangible—just math and energy. It’s the same pattern: we create artificial scarcity and give it value, because we need a common reference point to coordinate vast, impersonal economies.
Now, the asteroid mining thing? Yeah, it sounds wild. But from a capitalist perspective, it actually makes sense. If gold remains valuable, then any untapped supply—even in space—is a business opportunity. The fact that this seems grotesque when we think about all the hunger and suffering here on Earth is a painful contradiction, but it’s also part of the logic of capitalism. Capital doesn’t naturally flow toward moral priorities like feeding people; it flows toward returns. And unless there are incentives or systemic shifts to redirect that flow, people will keep pursuing things like asteroid gold, because that’s where the value signal points.
So yeah, it’s kind of maddening. But it’s not really about gold being useful—it’s about human systems needing anchors of value. And gold, for all its impracticality, happens to be an anchor that capitalism can rally around.
It’s universally obtainable but not in ridiculous volumes and not without effort and once obtained it’s incredibly durable. It’s essentially perfect for the job.
Yeah, I just can’t understand why people would pay more money for something that looks objectively nicer.
Fuck shiny polished gold, that is more easily made into jewelry, doesn’t react with skin, compliments many gemstones, and doesn’t significantly corrode, I want a pig iron wedding ring.
:)
It’s abundant though. We have thousands more times gold in circulation than used as jewellery. So if it were just jewellery then it’s be dirt cheap.
The reason its so expensive is people use it as investment. Like they hold massive amounts of it. It’s like a made up commodity.
Gold has plenty of uses, besides being shiny and easy to work with. Imagine if all your electronics used gold traces because they were so cheap. Imagine if the windows of your car were coated in gold like on an airplane so you could easily defrost them in the winter rather than blowing air at it in the front and potentially distracting lines in the back. Imagine if gold was the filling of choice since it has a similar expansion rate to teeth. Gold has a number of applications in space. Ever wonder why the JWST is that color?
There are plenty of things gold would be excellent for if it wasn’t so expensive.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/299609/gold-demand-by-industry-sector-share/
Only 7.16% of gold usage is for technology. The other 92.84% are just for purposes of being shiny. If we dropped gold from jewellery and as a proxy for money, there would be more than enough gold to go around and the price of gold would drop a lot.
Why are you surprised that the really expensive item isn’t used for utility purposes? Why do you think its use wouldn’t change if it was cheap?
Before aluminum was cheap to refine, it was used for cutlery and other displays of opulence. After it became cheaper, we used it everywhere.
Still not enough to use gold instead of copper for wiring
I don’t think gold would make really good wiring.
While I agree it is overvalued, what really put it into perspective for me is that all of the known gold in the world would fit into a cube with a side length of 20-25m.
So a fair price would be lower than what it is now, but it is scarce and its uses (corrosion resistance, conductivity, malleability, reflectivity, etc.) probably would still warrant a relatively high price.
all of the known gold in the world would fit into a cube with a side length of 20-25m.
Same could probably be said about my lifetime toenail clippings, but Beyonce won’t be dropping high stacks for those earrings.
That’s just a marketing issue. If people can sell nft jpegs you can sell those nails. Stay on that grind 💪😤🦶
CLIP don’t grind, you don’t want all them profits going up in dust!
If the price of gold plunges one day, it should already plunge today. In other words, the probability for success of those mining operations is low.
Why should it already plunge today? The demand/supply is still the same.
But it will not be the same when asteroid mining increases the supply tenfold.
True if used in production. But it’s used to store value. If I know gold will be worth 50% next year, I am not willing to pay full price today if I want to resell it then.
Ah, yes, the notoriously accessible and inexpensive field of launching rockets, landing said rocket on a giant sized bullet so a robot can go drill in it for weeks to dig up thousands of pounds of rock, lifting the robot that now weighs significantly more off of the giant bullet, and safely returning it to our larger, slightly slower bullet.
Careful there, you’ll trigger a lot of gold worshiping tryhards
Excellent. One of Israels biggest exports is finished gemstones. I hope they are crushed.
they don’t mine them. just process them. not sure it’s lowering the cost of raw diamonds will change the processing cost.
its morning and haven’t had my coffee, so I’m on instinct. I feel like it would lower the cost.
The processing cost is negligible compared the sales prices. Same as the cost of raw diamonds.
Diamonds are mostly a scam to part people from their money for literally a shiny rock.
it is, but if they maintain a monopoly, then cheaper raw diamonds will only increase profit.
although I’m assuming cheap synthetic diamonds are processed in other places.
Yeah, that’s what I mean. People have been overpaying for diamonds for a very long time, mostly because they buy a diamond specifically because it’s expensive.
A diamond isn’t 1000x better at being a shiny piece of glass on top of an engagement ring than e.g. a cubic zirconia. But it’s about 1000x better at showing that you paid 1000x the amount of money that you would have paid for a cubic zirconia.
And because of that, if the price of raw diamonds drops, the price of processed diamonds won’t change significantly, because the production cost of e.g. a diamond ring doesn’t matter for the asking price.
Neat! Let it come down to it’s real value.
If one day there are folks mining asteroids for gold they will not be humans as we will make ourselves extinct before that ever happens.
Beltalowda
Can’t wait for the day when we can have proper corrosion resistant materials. Just gold plate the hull of a ship, and salt water can’t do much.
Would that really help though? Gold is super soft so I think it would need to get frequently coated/plated again — and we already have pretty good and resistant marine paint.
Titanium is very corrosion resistant, not to mention plastics/fiberglass/carbon fiber, as I understand.
But yeah, cheap gold would be be great, just seems to me that the market would more be in e.g. electronics, where both corrosion resistance and electrical conductivity are required (something gold is fairly unique at).
Yeah, well maybe ships weren’t the best example.
Low wear resistance of gold is a significant issue, which definitely limits the number of potential applications, but I guess gold alloys could still be useful. For example, titanium has a bunch of alloys for different purposes, some more corrosion resistant than others, while others were optimized more towards wear resistance.
Titanium can also catch fire, which makes it a very tricky metal to use. Putting out a fire like that is pretty much impossible, so if your titanium cladded reactor catches fire, all you can realistically do is try to prevent the rest of the building from burning down. The reactor itself is gone at that point, so all you can do is wish you had paid for the gold cladding instead.
Also, the electrical conductivity of gold is amazing. If gold was as cheap as iron, we would definitely use lots of it in various electrical appliances.
If you can mine gold from asteroids, you’re probably also going to find silver and platinum. Those two have some amazing properties too, so I think asteroid mining has great potential to permanently revolutionize a bunch of industries.
Asteroid mining would collapse the markets for most minerals, except perhaps the higher volume stuff like iron.
The breaktrough for asteroid mining isn’t propulsion but how to mine and process ore in a vacuum.
Hmm. What’s hard about that?
Drill and blast seems like it should work as normal, or just a bucket if it’s the rubble heap kind. Getting noble metals like gold out of a solution is pretty easy with electrowinning.
Drill and blast seems like it should work as normal,
Zero G?
Why would that be a problem? The drilling platform would have to be tethered to the rock, but that’s doable and I’m pretty sure they drill all the time on the ISS. Actually, didn’t we drill into a comet or asteroid for samples sometime recently? The explosives would require no modification at all.
The drilling platform would have to be tethered to the rock
That would be the start of a solution.
Barbed harpoons were the approach with the comet. Putting a band around the whole thing could also work for a small body. If you’re going for gold, the asteroid is also going to be paramagnetic if I’m not mistaken, so you can just electromagnet on.
It’s slightly more problematic than on Earth, but I’m basically going to need some citations if I’m ever going to believe it’s sticking to the chosen landing site that’s the hardest part. A lot of proposals sidestep on-site processing, even, and rely on delivering a whole small body to Earth.
Maybe not to Earth (unless you wanna crash economies), but a LaGrange point would be suitable – as well as a place for something spinning so the hairless monkeys could have a semblance of gravity.
If you have human miners, anyway.
What about those things require any g?
Asteroid miners are going to have more in common with spiders than anything else; find a tasty roid, wrap it up in cling wrap and set off bombs inside of it until it’s a bag of gravel, then get the whole mess spinning and just let go of the stuff you don’t want to keep. Hell when you’re done you can re-harvest the angular momentum to propel you over to the next roid and start the process over again.
So easy, why hasn’t anyone done it already???
Easy? Who said easy? I didn’t say easy, I just explained a way it could be accomplished while conserving as much energy as possible.
For the same reason most other things involving space haven’t been done yet. We as a species suck at prioritising stuff and allocating resources
I mean, most space travel ideas haven’t been done, even ones that are many decades old. Shit’s expensive and risky, both as an investment and an activity.
Creating a debris field in orbit? You want this thing fully enclosed before you start messing with it in ways that cause it to break up.
I suppose in a very low orbit you could consider messy options if it will all burn up in a few months. But doesn’t seem ideal.
Actually it’s surviving the radiation outside the Van Allen belts.
Robots. Autonomous probes.
Available free to anyone who can hack the control codes!
Has anyone hacked the mining robots already in use on earth? Has anyone hacked any of NASA’s probes?
How would you know if anyone did? If it happened on earth, the owner would say ‘oh’ and walk up to turn it off. You can’t do that in deep space.
Given how big asteroids can be, that must be a massive microwave! Though the spinning plate probably won’t work due to gravity…
Well, i didn’t find it, but there was some news a few years ago, about progress to practical use of Maser as tunnel boring/melting device.
I’m skeptical about the feasibility of transporting heavy metals through space. Also, diamond were never scarce, it was all literally market manipulation.
Why wouldn’t it be feasible to transport heavy metals through space? They would just float.
Shooting stuff into space is hard, bringing it back to Earth is harder.
Yes, if diamonds were rare I wouldn’t have a diamond tipped drillbit set and several diamond saws. “Blah blah” quality … sure … but rare is rare.
Eh they are already moving a good clip relative to the earth, nudging them in this direction would be the easier part of the equation. Stopping them when they get here is probably where you want to focus your energy… No pun intended
I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
They are talking about not returning mined material from asteroids but about changing the trajectory of asteroids so that they collide with Earth. But if you do so, the asteroid would likely be destroyed, leaving little to mine, so it would have to be stopped (or slowed down) before reaching the ground.
Oh, right. I totally forgot about that part, I thought they were talking about diamonds.
But the plummeting price of gold from the abundance would make the asteroid mining commercially nonviable. As an aside, only 7.16% of the gold demand in the world is actually for technology: https://www.statista.com/statistics/299609/gold-demand-by-industry-sector-share/
There are many many more materials than just gold that could be extracted from asteroids.
But sure, establishing the infrastructure to make it commercially viable is a huge investment and won’t be commercially viable for a while. (Think about missions like Hayabusa that cost hundreds of millions to bilLions, but retrieved “just” a couple of gram of material.)
I suspect asteroid mining won’t be profitable unless we are able to use the materials to build stuff in space. It costs so much to launch stuff into space that a ton of say iron is going to be worth much more there than on earth. Whether we’ll ever reach that stage is anyone’s guess but I hope so.
Time to make Space Elevators real.
Just need to make sure the mining machine is durable enough and can launch itself from asteroids, because launching from asteroids with their low gravity is a lot easier than from earth, so a single earth launch can mine from multiple asteroids and send stuffs back.
Diamonds are rare on the surface of the earth, and their discovery therefore costs on the average much labour-time. Consequently, they represent much labour in a small volume of space. Jacob doubts that gold has ever paid its complete value. This holds true even more for diamonds. According to Eschwege, by 1823 the complete yield of the eight-year old Brazilian diamond-diggings had not yet amounted to the value of the 1½ year average product of the Brazilian sugar or coffee plantations. Given more richly laden diggings the same quantum of labour would be represented by more diamonds and their value would sink. If one succeeds in converting coal into diamonds with little labour, then the value of diamonds would sink beneath that of paving stones.
– Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1
I swear at times Marx had a time machine.
The rocket equation wants to have words with you.