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I posted this with regard to the possibility of harvesting asteroids and the dangers of huge amounts of precious metals being sold into the market. I imagine f

I posted this with regard to the possibility of harvesting asteroids and the dangers of huge amounts of precious metals being sold into the market. I imagine futures contracts could ameliorate this to some extent.

21 8y ago
Not really. Future contracts will also track the probability of asteroid mining feasibility. The markets are always fully discounting whatever information is available. The price of gold will crash before the first rocket will take off. Many centuries ago, speculators would sit in harbors and when they noticed a ship on the horizon they would immediately start shorting on the market the commodity supposed to be on that ship.
UncleEntity 8y ago
The "danger" in this case is a reduction in scarcity which would lead to all sorts of alternative uses for whatever they decide to tow back to Earth. If they perfected a way to cheaply process titanium tomorrow it would suck for people betting on the scarcity of titanium but would be a boon for countless other uses of it that simply aren't economic today like stronger, lighter engine blocks for the family car. Admittedly I didn't read the wikipedia page so... --edit-- Ok, read the page and "nothing to see here, move along..." since no modern currency is backed by precious metals.