[kiba]

It acts like gold, but it is not gold. Gold is a tangible asset that has been a proven store of wealth since as long as we know about the history of human civilization.

Once somebody mine an asteroid full of gold, the whole Gold as money will come to an end. However, gold will become a more useful commodity in industrial/medical/electronic/etc applications since they are cheap.

Thousand years of history mean nothing when something change the whole playing field. There's nothing remotely implausible about asteroid mining except the necessary development of a space industry. As far as I am concerned, gold is living on borrowed time.

[w0utert]

I don't think that many people are interested in preserving their wealth until after 3000 AD, so let's forget about science-fiction scenarios.

[Tuna-Fish]

Commercial asteroid mining will be reality within this century, and is already attracting investment. Look up Planetary Resources & friends.

There are individual asteroids that have more easily extractable precious metals than the entire present earth supply, should we have a good method of returning them to earth. The mere existence of these ought to start playing a number on the metals markets once planetary resources starts doing something newsworthy.

[w0utert]

People who I assume know much better what they are talking about (space agencies, scientists) have already commented on these wild space mining fantasy you are referring about. It's a ridiculous idea that is nowhere near technical or economical viability, and there really is no horizon on which it will be. To mine asteroids you would first have to build a permanent moon base, and drive down the costs of space missions down to the point that a single payload brought to earth would be worth more than the required investments.

Just because some nutters invest their excess money in some sci-fi fantasy doesn't make it real.