Your bathtub could hold a fortune

yep, there's enough gold in the ocean to make us all rich

By Smartasaurus· 1 min read Curious

Imagine standing on the beach

Scale check

Gut call — how extreme does this actually get?

Reality tends to overshoot. Pick your ceiling.

The short version

yep, there's enough gold in the ocean to make us all rich
Currently, there is no cost-effective way to extract it.
If we ever mastered the extraction of this dissolved treasure, the sudden influx of 20 million tons of gold would likely cause the global economy t…

There is a massive fortune hiding in the waves, but you cannot mine it with a shovel. Approximately 20 million tons of gold are dissolved throughout the world's combined ocean waters.

This gold is not found in nuggets or veins. Instead, it exists as gold ions, diluted to a concentration of about 13 parts per trillion. If you could harvest all of it, the total value would exceed 700 trillion dollars at current market prices.

Currently, there is no cost-effective way to extract it. The process of filtering enough water to gather even a gram of gold would cost far more than the gold itself. Humans have tried for decades to invent a system to tap into this reservoir, but the sheer volume of water required makes it a logistical impossibility.

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