What would the economic impact of the ability to transmute lead into gold?

Okay, my first trial run, How would humans and society react to a superhero existing and saving the earth?, of social sciences with hard-science is looking some what sickly at the moment (maybe someone is preparing an answer, but it is taking a while), so maybe I will chose a more mathy social science for this stack exchange audience: economics.

Okay, so an inventor/tinkerer figures out how to transmute lead into gold by exposing it to some sort of radiation. He was able to build this machine using spare parts he had. The mass of the gold is equal to the mass of the transmuted lead. Given current gold, lead, and electricity costs, the electricity costs were 1/30th of the increase in the materials value. He doesn't publish his method, but shares it with personal inventor/tinkerer friends. Knowledge of the method grows slowly but surely.

The only difference between this gold and regular gold (as found on the market) is that this gold is about a million times purer than our purest gold. It could easily be made indistinguishable though by mixing it with impurities.

Let's say the original inventor resides in the contemporary USA, but the method does spread to other countries. What impact would this have on the economy? Note that this is hard-science; you must supply references to economic or similar journals or other reputable sources to backup your answer. Maths usually make everything better. See this and this for details.

posted over 8 years ago

PyRulez‭

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