Marathon Fusion Says It Turned Mercury Into Gold, but No Amount, Cost or Independent Check Has Been Published

Marathon Fusion, a San Francisco start-up, announced on October 21 that it transmuted mercury into stable gold in September. It says the result beats CERN’s record by a factor of ten. Its method fires neutrons from fusion reactions at mercury, creating an unstable isotope that decays into gold.

The claim comes with big gaps. Euronews notes that no amount of gold and no cost were given, and that the claim has not been independently verified. For scale, CERN said the Large Hadron Collider produced about 29 picograms of gold between 2015 and 2018.

The commercial idea rests on an earlier, not yet peer-reviewed 2025 study. It estimated about 5 tonnes of gold per year per gigawatt of fusion power, so 100 plants would add roughly 500 tonnes, around 14% of 2025 mine output of 3,672 tonnes. The gold would be radioactive at first and might need storage for up to 18 years. There are no public plans to commercialise it.

The headline question is whether lab-made gold could crash prices the way lab-grown diamonds did, where wholesale prices fell 90% to 95% from 2015 levels. Gold traded near $4,062 on Thursday, more than 27% below its January record of $5,598, and it slid further on Friday. For now, the claim is a lab result, not a supply shock.

Track the market yourself with AiTraderView’s FREE tools: Crypto Cockpit for charts and 75+ indicators, Crypto Screener to find setups, and Crypto Portfolio to follow your holdings. Just create a FREE account and try them yourself!

Sources:

• Euronews: Could lab-made gold crash prices like diamonds? US start-up says it turned mercury into gold
• Modern Jeweler: Fusion Startup Claims It Can Turn Mercury Into Gold
• Newsbit: Goud en zilver crashen naar laagste koersen in een jaar tijd