[bruce511]

The whole concept of "turning lead into gold" is somewhat self defeating. Because turning lead into gold doesn't make lead as valuable as gold, it makes gold as valuable as lead.

This has happened before. Aliminium used to be very scarce, and hence expensive. More expensive than silver. The top of the Washington monument is capped with aluminum.

A new process was invented to extract aluminum. So scarcity disappeared and value is negligible. Today we use it for packaging soda.

Turning anything (cheap) into gold means gold is cheap. It doesn't make us all rich.

[LtdJorge]

Tbh, it if couldn’t be recycled, it wouldn’t be used for soda. I’ve heard that 70% of aluminium in use today id recycled.

[sltkr]

> The top of the Washington monument is capped with aluminum.

Interesting. I was curious how large and expensive this was.

Apparently the tip weighed only 100 ounce, at a time the price was around $1.10 per ounce. Translating to 2025 dollars it would be around $36 per ounce, or $3,600 for the entire tip; much less than I expected, but still more expensive than the silver price today ($32.75 per ounce).

[HenryBemis]

In a way yes, but(!!) if I know the way and I turn 50gr of lead to gold per month, and I slowly do this (not convert 200 tons of lead into gold and flood the market) then I can have a rich and easy life without destabilising the price of gold. But that's just me.. Someone else may play this differently.

[throwaway2202]

There was a point in history when science was not public. Even after it became public, moat was still a thing.

[bruce511]

I presume you're referring to the concept of alchemy in the middle ages?

The problem in that context is test it would have been impossible to keep the process a secret. To be useful (to say the king) it would have to be more than one guy in a castle. And between spies, and traitors who could be materially incentivised), and outright kidnapping and torture, well, I just don't see it staying hidden.

And its not like a King could really even hide the fact that he had a "gold mine" producing endless quantities of gold.

It's kinda like the story of the goose laying the golden eggs. The story fails to elaborate on what they did with the eggs. Presumably they sold them, but to whom? And did that person not get curious as to the source of the gold? And what did he do with all that gold? He'd need to sell enough of it to pay the peasant. Did his customer not notice the increase in volume?

So no, alchemy wouldn't have remained a secret for long. And the king would just be financing wars to protect it.

[throwaway2202]

Fair point.

[saagarjha]

Yes, the moat is that you need the LHC.

[chipsrafferty]

Not if you're the only one with the knowledge or means to do it.