Should You Be Worried About Lab-Grown Gold or Silver?

Lab-grown gold and silver technically exist, but you shouldn’t be too worried, here’s why: 

Unlike diamonds, silver and gold are elements. That means you can’t just grow them, you have to change the atomic structure of an element to create them. To make even a tiny amount of silver or gold in a lab, you need:

• Expensive machines
• Specialized scientists and engineers
• Years of experimentation and precision
• Massive amounts of energy

So you’re basically burning through valuable resources to try and create the tiniest amount of the same material. We’re talking about atoms, not grams, not ounces. Just atoms.  

Simply put, you consumed more silver than what was created. The machines that were partially made of silver. The energy costs by machines partially powered by silver. The scientists and engineers consumer silver through multiple items in their day to day.

The equation doesn't work when the alternative is to just mine it for cheaper. The same problem exists in gold as well.