Written by Bryan Lutz, Editor at Dollarcollapse.com:
A startup says it made real gold out of mercury. So, naturally, the internet has been going wild mocking the value of gold…
Last month, we demonstrated high-rate alchemy: turning mercury into real, stable gold, beating CERN’s record by a factor of 10.
Last week, we enriched isotopes in the world’s most powerful plasma centrifuge, beating the Soviet record that stood for 40 years.
Now, we’re building a fusion reactor in San Francisco to achieve record power density.
— Marathon Fusion (@MarathonFusion) October 21, 2026
Marathon Fusion’s post has more than 5 million views.
So, should gold owners panic?
Naw. In layman’s terms. Here’s how the reaction works…
They fire a fast fusion neutron into mercury-198, and it knocks a second neutron loose. That leaves mercury-197, which, within days, decays into gold-197. This isn’t exactly new physics. In 2025, CERN reported its collider had turned lead into 29 trillionths of a gram of gold between 2015 and 2018.
The difference here is that Marathon claims it beat that record tenfold. But they won’t say how much gold the reaction made.
Ten times CERN’s haul works out to about 300 trillionths of a gram…
Now, Marathon’s own 2025 paper says a full-scale plant could produce about 2 tonnes of gold a year per gigawatt of fusion heat.
To match one year of mine supply, about 3,300 tonnes, you’d need roughly 1,650 gigawatts of fusion heat. Which works out to…
To create the same amount of gold tonnage as one year gold mine supply it would require 550 large nuclear power plants, or more heat than every nuclear reactor on Earth produces today.
Marathon’s reactor in San Francisco is still under construction.
To make the value of gold produced through nuclear fusion is more difficult to fathom, the gold comes out radioactive. According to Marathon, the gold needs to sit in storage for seven to seventeen years before anyone can sell it.
Ronnie Stoferle at In Gold We Trust report team weighed in too:
Fusion gold – a startup says it can make gold from mercury inside a fusion reactor. Here’s what it means for the gold you hold.
Digging one ounce already cost the big miners a record USD 1,578 in 2025. Making one in a reactor starts with a power plant nobody has built yet.
That bill would be ASTRONOMICAL… If gold were produced this way, every new ounce would cost more, not less!
More on how gold’s costs shape its price below.
— In Gold We Trust (@IGWTreport) October 23, 2026
Even with the rising cost of diesel, it is much more expensive to create gold through nuclear fusion than to find and pull it out of the ground.
Here’s the full breakdown: