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> 6. If you get a massive quantity of some valuable material it'll change the economics. That $20 trillion won't be $20 trillion with the added supply. For com
by jmonegro 14y ago
> 6. If you get a massive quantity of some valuable material it'll change the economics. That $20 trillion won't be $20 trillion with the added supply.
For comparison, back in 2010 or so it was estimated that all the money in the world was about 70 trillion. That asteroid, if brought in it's entirety and valued at 20 trillion would represent around 30% of the world's money.
They'd have to do some pretty ingenious financial tricks to keep it from extreme devaluation: at the current prices and money supply, there just isn't enough money in the world to sell it off within the next 50-100 years - possibly more.
- brc 14y agoI think everyone here is confusing of 'total supply' with 'supply available for purchase'. There is an analogy : the US bullion reserves are something like 12,000 tons of Gold. Obviously if this was all offered for sale at once, then the price of gold would crash. But it doesn't, because they don't. Assuming someone is sitting on a massive lump of platinum, the market price would only be affected if they chose to dump it all on the market at once. Knowledge that the large supply of platinum exists wouldn't cause the market to crash. There would likely be some effect of releasing more supply of platinum onto the market, but the company wouldn't be stupid enough to offer it all for sale at once. They would hold it in reserve and sell it according to demand. So yes, increased supply would affect prices. No, it wouldn't cause chaos. Of course, this assumes that whomever is in charge has the discipline to do it properly. Perhaps, though, human frailty would win out and your scenario would come to pass. For this, we can look back to the Spanish conquest of the gold and silver mines of South America.