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)
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
still one of humanity's less stupid ideas, even so.