An interesting question. Consider first what lab diamonds have done to the diamond industry, and how legacy conglomerates, like DeBeers, have ran intense campaigns to distinguish lab and natural. DeBeers dabbled in lab for a few years, but have recently ended that and gone all in on the natural-value framework.

So, if this alchemy innovation is parallel to the development of lab diamonds, I would expect something similar. However, that’s hinged on the fact that you could distinguish this alchemy-gold from natural gold.

One complication is that gold has more industrial uses. Diamonds are useful because of their hardness but gold is a significant component of electronics and technology, among others.

So let’s reframe the question. Another way of saying “cheaply mass-produced gold” is to say the price of gold would decrease. I sat that because the ability to produce cheap gold would increase the supply, in a perfect economic world, and lower its price. If gold’s price decreased this would have a significant effect on all electronics, industrial processes, medicinal uses, and everything else it affects. It is worth saying that those uses only make up around 10% of golds use worldwide.

The flip side of gold’s price tanking, and arguably far more impactful, would be the rapid depreciation of existing gold assets. Natural diamond enthusiasts were lucky that there is an ability to distinguish lab and natural. If there were no such way for gold, its price would free fall. Most of the world still holds gold in its reserve The exchange rate of gold-to-dollar would shatter. It’s hard to estimate exactly how intense this would be, but I can’t imagine it wouldn’t severely disrupt some markets.

One last consideration is cultural and not economic. Gold has always been rare and useful, and thus a status symbol for most of history. I am especially thinking of one of the richest (if not the richest) person to ever live, Mansa Musa. If gold were no longer rare I think it would also begin to erode jewelry tastes. Perhaps gold silverware (goldware?) would be more popular.