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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

10 Quintillion at current scarcity. If we were to lasso it down to Earth, then the metals would become "too cheap to meter" and not worth 10 Quintillion.

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I'm reminded of the story of how America once flexed its financial power by building the Washington Monument...and capping it off with a 6lb aluminum capstone [0]. Aluminum was so coveted that Napoleon had his dinnerware made from it - and that was a bigger flex than eating off of gold.

Of course, aluminum today is a dirt cheap metal that's found almost everywhere and in everything. All it took to bring the cost down drastically was figuring out a new refining process and flooding the market with new supply.

But I'm sure someone once analyzed soil samples, discovered that nearly 8% of the earth is made of alumnium, and theoretically, all that alumnium was worth XX quadrillion dollars.

0: https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9511/Binczewski-9511.h...

Unless like diamonds you limit their availability to actively prop up the prices.

A contrary opinion would be that Gold isn't exactly scare on this planet and we keep mining more of it and it isn't exactly cheap. As of this writing it the spot price is $1,922.40 USD.

> isn't exactly scare on this planet

The amount of gold mined in all of human history is about 205,000 tons. Compare this to about 2,000,000,000 tons of steel produced each year.

Just wondering, how much of that steel is recycled?

While a high percentage of steel waste is recycled 60-70%, this amounts to than 5% of gross production.

It is more complicated than this because the 2 billion tons is for crude steel. Recycled steel is probably generally being used in more refined steel products wherein it likely makes up a much higher percentage.

The asteroid is loaded with nickel and iron. I don’t think you could play the de Beers game with those metals. If you limited supply then people would just carry on like we do now.

Why not? capture the asteroid. Put it in a secure compound, release 1/100th the minerals per year for 100 yrs as a form of multigenerational wealth for the families that own it?

Or if you disagree with the fraction consider a different fraction like 1000th, 10000th etc... At some point it could both make someone extremely wealthy and not immediately destroy the price (as supply increases and the price decreases, we'll also find new uses like nickel based paper towels or studs for homes)

Edit: ok joke's on me that I missed some important details like diameter and velocity. But the general point applies -- meter the release into the market to not completely saturate the market or depreciate the value.

Secure compound? Good luck with that. The asteroid is 140 miles in diameter. For comparison, the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was less than 10 miles in diameter.

There’s no way you could bring the entire thing down to Earth without causing another extinction event. You’d have to keep it in orbit and at that point it’s anybody’s game.

"capture the asteroid"

ohhh, you meant I should have stopped it from entering Earth's atmosphere at 0.1c?

How can you own an Asteroid though? You land a probe on it you own it?

I mean at that point it’s just going to get taken from you lol

Until the board/investors demand revenue increases...

Really depends on how you lasso it down to Earth, a hard impact could go very wrong and leave you with barely any humans to buy or even dig up that piece of space metal. Also, just because it is composed of metal, that doesn't mean it's solid. It's only last year that OSIRIS-REx touched down on asteroid Bennu and punched it far deeper than expected because the material was so loose. Pulling that, let alone a 140 mile big Psyche into an orbit that's feasible for exploitation will be a challenge.

No chance the metals would become "too cheap to meter". I'd bet on the opposite in fact:

step 1) acquire the stockpile of metals

step 2) set prices just low enough you drive all current mines/producers out of business

step 3) quadruple the prices. It'll take people a long time to spin up new mines and refineries. For bonus profits spend some of your monopoly money on lobbying/regulation.

step 4) goto step 2

Right, but whoever did that would control supply - like OPEC, they could therefore control scarcity.

not if it's a us company, a monopoly that hurts consumers is illegal

Haha, great joke 10/10.

Monopolies are not illegal. Abusing a monopoly is illegal. Selling inventory in limited quantities is not abuse of a monopoly, unless you are colluding with competitors to do so.

I'm guessing a company worth a quintillion can get away from just about anything.

If 99% of global supply fell into the hands of the single country or corporation that brought it home, they would have the power to set prices. We would be looking at a De Beers-diamond situation.

Well up to an amount that's not competitive with earth based resources. Then again, the classic move would be to flood the market for a few years and totally bankrupt the competition before jacking the prices.

If we have durable goods, shouldn't someone buy out this flood, stockpile and hold it until prices go up and the sell at profit?

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