this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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The jewelry and investment industries make up 45-50% of gold consumption. Practical and industrial uses make up only 5-10%.
As such, while flooding the market with cheap gold would rapidly lower value, that's unlikely to be how the gold is sold. If the amount of gold being generated from fusion reactors is orders of magnitude less than the global consumption rate from jewelry and investment, which seems likely, and they are selling at our near market value rather than trying to undercut everyone, then the value of the generated gold would remain relatively stable.
in other words, considering that the gold market generates something like $350bn USD per year, and the total market value of "above ground" gold around $25tn USD, even if fusion reactors generate $1bn USD worth of gold it would have a negligible impact on the price of gold while providing significant value to the reactor operators (incentivizing the growth of the fusion reactor industry)