There’s a giant space floating out there somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and it has (sort of) brought about a bullish sentiment among some Bitcoin proponents on social media.
As irrational as it may sound, the sense of optimism among these Bitcoin bulls is far-fetched, but not entirely void of substance.
Mining Solar System’s Most Precious Asteroids
The space enthusiasts among you have probably already guessed that we’re talking about 16 Psyche — one of the 10 most massive asteroids in the asteroid belt.
16 Psyche is very rich in precious metals including gold and platinum, which is why it is currently valued at a whopping $700 quintillion — that’s 7 followed by 18 zeroes.
Even more interestingly, it could be only a matter of time until premier space agencies like NASA begin mining 16 Psyche and other similar asteroids for their minerals.
Of course, these are all highly speculative predictions at the current juncture, but odds are reasonably high for events to unfold along those lines in the coming decades. In fact, NASA has already scheduled a mission to 16 Psyche in 2022. The probe will take around four years to intercept the asteroid before starting to collect data for research (and possibly, for future mining missions). Who knows where Bitcoin’s price could be by then?
By some estimates, asteroid mining could very well be a reality in the next four to five decades.
Asteroid Adds to Bitcoin’s Charm as an Investment Vehicle
But what does 16 Psyche have to do with Bitcoin anyway, you may ask?
Well, turns out with asteroid mining likely to be a reality in the coming decades, the scarcity of gold, platinum, and other precious metals will start diminishing over time — and that spells the doom for these assets as their price is inherently driven by scarcity.
If the market is suddenly flooded with huge volumes of gold, the capsized supply-demand ratio will ensure that the asset devalues quickly — presumably not giving investors enough time to cut their losses.
In comparison, there will only be a limited number of Bitcoin tokens that will ever exist. The number of new Bitcoin entering circulation will reduce by 50% every four years before the total supply of 21 million tokens is exhausted.
Theoretically, a gradually depleting supply will translate into a consistently growing demand for the benchmark-crypto, thus giving it a never-diminishing upward momentum over the long haul, as BeInCrypto had previously reported.
Meanwhile, critics — especially gold proponents such as Peter Schiff dismiss the speculations surrounding asteroid mining and its impact on the value of precious metals as sheer misinformation, or rather, fake news.
The existence of a golden asteroid is fake news– a lie spread to pump Bitcoin. 16 Psyche is a rare metallic asteroid with a composition similar to the earth’s core. It’s made almost entirely of an iron-nickel allow, with small amounts of other metals, likely to include gold.
— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) June 29, 2019
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Twitter.
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