Alchemists misunderstood both chemistry and economics

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Will it though? There are far to many egregiously wealthy people on our current monetary standard, we dont seem to be moving on. I will happily pay someone in leaves though.

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Yeah nowadays that is a common interpretation, and you can try to find support for it in the mysticism with which all of the protosciences were imbued. But I really do think they were aiming for gold. Or were claiming as much, to get sponsorships and such. Kinda like how researchers nowadays will exaggerate their abilities and research goals to get grants.

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Did you know that actual historical alchemy was often banned by various kings and monarchs? They did so not due to superstition, or because alchemy didn't work. Rather, they banned alchemy because it DID work.

We now know that you cannot use chemical reactions, however complex, to turn base metals like lead or copper into silver or gold. However, you can use alchemy to give these base metals the appearance of silver or gold. Alchemists could coat coins in durable coatings that would appear to be like silver or gold. Dip a copper coin in the right solution and it will take on the appearance of gold. And you can then take that coin out of the solution, clean it thoroughly, and the faux-gold treatment will remain. It's not just a layer of paint resting on the surface; the upper layers of copper atoms have actually chemically reacted to produce compounds that give the appearance of gold or silver.

So, even though alchemy didn't work to truly turn lead into gold, from the perspective of a monarch, that didn't actually matter. Because when it comes to currency debasement, making a fake gold coin so good that it fools people is just as good as making real gold. The alchemists couldn't turn create real gold coins, but they could create counterfeit gold coins that could be quite convincing in the right circumstances. They didn't need to create a forgery that could fool a modern PhD chemist with a lab full of equipment; they just needed something that could fool an illiterate 12th century merchant at his shop. The process:

Take a mold or press a stamp of one of the king's official gold coins.
Use the mold or stamp to cast, press, or forge coins out of cheap metals like copper or tin.
Apply an alchemical process to make the copper or tin coin look like gold.
Spend the counterfeit coin as a real coin.

Coins were a better target than bulk gold like bars. With a bar, you would notice that the "gold" has an incorrect density. But a counterfeit coin, mixed in with a larger number of legitimate coins? Easy to pass off as the genuine article.

Kings often banned alchemists from their realms. Practicing alchemy was often a capital offense. In terms of true elemental transfiguration, alchemy failed. In terms of the ability to create spendable wealth from nothing, alchemy absolutely did work. From the perspective of a monarch looking to protect their currency from debasement, alchemy was a very real threat.

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That wouldn't work with gold, as there would be no way to tell the difference; with diamonds, natural ones have flaws that aren't present in artificial ones

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I love infodumps, although wood scientist doesn’t quite check out

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Laughs in Breton woods

Cruxifux

Yeah exactly.

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Metallurgy is just their hobby.

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That is a strange take because economics builds on this principle to function. If you found a producing company today it will have to buy a material and - by the magic you apply to it - sell it for more. Like a refinery buying crude oil and selling gasoline. Or a goldsmith buying gold and selling jewellery. It's how everything works.

On a broader take it reveals a Marxian perspective on a market where every item looses its value to the cost of the labor that goes in it. For the alchemist (if everyone found out his Pb->Au secret) the price will drop until it's worth the labor that went in it because everyone else also can't sell cheaper.

So labor is all that has value. And owning the means of production hasn't.

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I don't think any technology can be successfuly kept secret in the long term

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Not if you're the only one who knows and can create artificial scarcity.

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Why? They make diamonds in the lab.

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Supply and demand, if you increase supply the price drops.

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*DeBeers has entered the chat*

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That only works if value is solely determined through labor and it is not. Scarcity creates value through demand without added labor. Sone things are valuable with no labor involved. The labor theory of value is incredibly flawed.

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The example I gave you is the exact opposite of what you’re saying

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No, it isn’t. The price of diamonds is declining as well. it’s supply and demand.

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Really depends on how you define "magical". It was also very much legitimate proto-chemistry.

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Yeah, control the means of production!

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Secret knowledge was a lot more realistic back then.

If you were the ONLY person that knows how to turn base metals into gold, you can still be rich beyond all reason.