“There will never be lab grown $BTC,” he added.
His comments came in response to a surprising announcement from San Francisco-based startup Marathon Fusion, which claims to have achieved a breakthrough in transforming mercury into real gold.
Scientists make progress toward artificial gold
On October 21, Marathon Fusion announced that it had successfully demonstrated what it described as high-rate alchemy.
“Last month, we demonstrated high-rate alchemy: turning mercury into real, stable gold, beating CERN’s record by a factor of 10,” the company stated.
The startup also claimed to have developed a powerful plasma centrifuge capable of enriching isotopes, outperforming a Soviet-era record that had stood for four decades.
Marathon Fusion is now working on building a fusion reactor in San Francisco to achieve record power density.
However, its gold-production ambitions have attracted considerable attention.
In 2025, Marathon Fusion outlined a process that could theoretically produce approximately 5,000 kilograms of gold annually from a gigawatt-scale fusion power plant.
The proposed technology uses high-energy neutrons to convert a specific mercury isotope into gold through nuclear transmutation.
Nevertheless, commercially viable mass production remains a distant prospect. The company’s latest experimental claims do not establish that artificial gold can already be produced cheaply or at industrial scale.
Why Bitcoin’s scarcity could be different
Eckel’s argument touches on one of the central narratives surrounding Bitcoin’s long-term investment appeal: its predictable scarcity.
Unlike gold, whose total supply can increase through mining discoveries, technological improvements and potentially nuclear transmutation, Bitcoin has a maximum supply of approximately 21 million coins.
The cryptocurrency’s issuance follows a predetermined schedule, with mining rewards declining by half approximately every four years.
Any attempt to increase Bitcoin’s supply beyond the established limit would require a change to the network’s consensus rules.
