While the asteroid will of course never be worth the quintillions it's worth on paper, there's no doubt it will be worth something. Otherwise, why are people still spending money to dig up gold out of the earth?

But gold isn't that interesting. The only reason it's valued the way it is, is because everybody has agreed it's valuable. But there are many other rare metals and minerals we can mine from asteroids that would be immensely useful. In smartphones and other electronics, for example.

At the moment, rare earth elements are often mined in terrible destructive ways, sometimes under atrocious circumstances. Fairphone is the one phone company that's trying to do something about it, but on their own, they're not going to have a lot of impact. Off-world mining would allow us to leave our Earth intact while still enjoying the smartphones and other electronics that these materials enable.