Corporathanium

Why glitter like gold when you can shine like a god?

— Corporathanium Marketing Slogan

The 22nd century has seen some truly astounding advances in material science. From carbon nanotubes being perfected and anti-iron, to virus-killing ceramic and bio-integrating metallics, the Megacorpolis is crafted from things that would have been considered science-fiction just a hundred years prior.
But we're not here to talk about any of those - those are complex, technical wonders and the world lives in a tweet-long attention span. No, people ignore the things that have made miracles of technology possible, and instead gawk and obsess over Corporathanium

What The Hell Is That?

Corporathanium is an artificially manufactured metal, used extensively in everything from cybernetics to jewelry - mainly because it looks really cool. It's a soft, easily-worked metal with a rainbowish color to it that reflects color brilliantly and can melt into a funny looking puddle at relatively low temperatures. Once cooled, it solidifies back into spiraling crystals, which is a huge selling point and great party trick.

by Gareth Pugh

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Although it has many interesting and useful properties, it's very shiny, and people react like magpies, flocking to bolt bits of the metal to everything they can. It's become a fashion statement, with different variants of Corporathanium drawing adherents like a religion.
Corporathanium is made in labs, synthesized through other metals and chemical treatments. To keep the appearance of exclusivity (and prices high), production is modest. There are different variants of the stuff, depending on the Corporation that makes it and the marketing campaign currently running, but the trademark rainbow shimmer is what really sells it.

It's also used for things like high-grade arms manufacturing, quantum computing, power generation, and so on, but nobody really cares about that. Shiny!

The End of Gold

Once the most precious metal on earth (well, unless you're a scientist), the glory days of gold has come and gone with the advent of commercial asteroids mining.
A single Class-S Asteroid was enough to pretty much permanently crash the market and gold's now as common as dirt. Silver, electrum, and platinum haven't fared any better, and these shiny symbols of wealth have now become just shiny.

by ExplainingTheFuture.com

While great for resource scarcity and so on, it wasn't great for corporations who sold precious metal now that it wasn't so precious anymore.

And to fill that void and make up for lost profits, Corporathanium was created.

by Spelexperten