On Saturday, January 3rd, Samson Mow ignited a fresh discussion within the cryptocurrency community by emphasizing a fundamental difference between Bitcoin’s fixed scarcity and gold’s potentially changing availability.
The Bitcoin advocate highlighted that Bitcoin’s limited supply is firmly capped at 21 million coins through mathematical rules, making it impossible to create more beyond this limit.
The Threat of “Gold Alchemy” via Fusion Technology
Mow’s comments followed an announcement from scientists at Marathon Fusion who revealed they have developed a scalable technique to convert mercury into gold.
Researchers explained that future fusion reactors could generate approximately two metric tons of gold annually per gigawatt of thermal energy by utilizing mercury as raw material.
They also emphasized that this innovative method would not compromise the plant’s electricity production and might even double its total revenue streams.
Traditionally, gold has held value largely due to its natural rarity and the difficulty involved in mining it. However, this new breakthrough suggests those factors may soon change dramatically.
If successfully implemented on a large scale, the scarcity of gold could become adjustable since it can be artificially produced rather than solely extracted from nature. This shift might reduce physical gold’s appeal compared to Bitcoin—a purely digital asset with immutable supply constraints.
Mow used these scientific developments as a springboard to revisit the ongoing debate about which asset holds superior value based on scarcity: Bitcoin or gold?
The crypto community widely agreed with his point that while Bitcoin’s supply is strictly limited by code and cannot be altered under any circumstances, advances in nuclear technology could expand the amount of available gold in circulation.
Although mining exists for both assets, only Bitcoin enforces an absolute cap at 21 million tokens—no scientific discovery or technological innovation can increase this number.
Several commentators further noted that unlike physical commodities governed by geological processes or chemical reactions, Bitcoin’s existence relies entirely on mathematical principles and consensus across its global network.