Market analyst Jesse Eckel believes Bitcoin has a major advantage over gold in terms of scarcity, as scientists make progress in artificially producing precious metals. Eckel posted on October 21, "Lab-grown gold will eventually be here and cheap, just like diamonds," but "there will never be lab-grown Bitcoin."

His comments were in response to an announcement by San Francisco startup Marathon Fusion, which claimed to have successfully converted mercury into gold and outlined a theoretical process to produce approximately 5,000 kg of gold annually from a gigawatt-scale fusion power plant by 2025. However, commercial-scale production remains a distant prospect. Eckel's argument touches on the core narrative of Bitcoin's predictable scarcity, with a maximum supply of approximately 21 million coins, while gold's supply could increase through mining, technological improvements, and nuclear transmutation.