ITC 69: Exoplanet Gold Rush

ITC 69 – The Exoplanet Gold Rush What happens when humanity stares into infinity and thinks it sees treasure? In this episode of In The Crease, we follow the fever and the hangover of abundance:

• Spain’s silver fleets and the hollowing of an empire
• California and Klondike boomtowns that burned out overnight
• Aliens?
• And finally, the asteroids themselves — rocks worth trillions, or worth nothing at all.

From quintillion-dollar headlines to the cold math of markets, from ghost towns to orbital stock exchanges, ITC 69 asks the question no one wants to face: what happens when scarcity — the skeleton of money — finally breaks? Infinity is coming. The only question left is whether it remakes us, or ruins us.

🎧 Hosted by J E DOUBLE F
📅 Episode Release: August 31, 2025

In The Crease (ITC) is where history, mystery, and the human condition collide. Hosted by J E DOUBLE F, each episode blends storytelling, analysis, and dark humor to explore the strange, the forgotten, and the unsettlingly relevant.

🎧 New episodes release bi-weekly.
📅 Current Season: ITC Season 4 (Episodes 61–80).

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
The threshold omens step through past impressive future. We are
not alone. Time thinkin the time you think. So.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
From the first flex of gold pulled from a river
bed to the silent veins ripped from Potassi's Mountains to
the dust choked chaos of California in eighteen forty nine,
humanity has always chased the treasure. We find it, we
fight over it, we waste it, and somehow we find

(02:43):
a way to never ever learn. Those old Russias made
empires very rich and then hollowed them out. Spain Silver
curse flooded Europe with coin, only to crash its economy.
The California gold rush built cities overnight, but it also
burned through lives like kindling. Every time we dig deep,

(03:08):
we dream even bigger than before, and then we pay
for it. Now, imagine all of that scaled up to
the stars, because above your heads, locked in asteroids and exoplanets,
there are riches that make every past empire look like

(03:30):
a kid's lemonade. Stand platinum for fusion reactors, uranium for power,
rare earths for every circuit and screen, oceans of water,
ice for fuel for entire planets. With resources we can't
even name, and maybe elements that have yet to be discovered,

(03:52):
And so the fever is already here. Companies are sketching
mining plans as we speak, nations are sharpening their legal knives.
Investors whisper about trillionaires, and somewhere in the back of
every human heart there's that old dangerous gleam. The rush

(04:14):
is coming. I'm your host, j Elef. This is in
the crease. Itc Episode sixty nine, the exoplanet gold Rush.
And yes, before you ask, this number does strangely fit
because if humanity is going to start drilling shafts and
new frontiers, you better believe there's gonna be a little

(04:36):
smidget of nu window here and there along the way.
But jokes aside, tonight, we're chasing actually something deadly serious.
This isn't just about shiny rocks in the sky. It's
about science, economics, and philosophy colliding in the infinite frontier.
It's about whether abundance frees us or ruins us. And

(04:58):
it's about the final question if we find others out there,
not just rocks, but neighbors, what happens when they step
into the marketplace. So grab your pickaxe or whatever favorite
and minecraft skin you may have, because we're going to
dig into this.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
Now.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
History has taught us, but it is full of gold rushes,
literal and metaphorical, and almost none of them in the
way their dreamers expected. They always start with whispers. Okay,
you know there's treasures out there right, just waiting, just waiting,
endless wealth for the taking. Then, of course comes the stampedes,

(05:43):
the markets, the fortunes, and usually inevitably, the collapse. Let's
take Spain in the sixteenth century. At first glance, they
really hit the jackpot silver from the America's mountains of it,
especially from modern day Bolivia. It flowed into Europe by
the shipload. Imagine endless galleons stacked with bars of silver,

(06:05):
a glittering tide crossing the Atlantic. Spain thought it had security,
eternal dominance, riches beyond even their imagining. Except it wasn't
a blessing. It was a curse. Economists today called it
the resource curse. When sudden wealthy stabilizes instead of strengthens,

(06:26):
Spain's silver basically calls runaway inflation. Prices, sword wages stagnated,
debts ballooned. The empire became addicted to silver, the way
gambler becomes addicted to credit instead of investing in industry
or innovation. Spain imported will be polite, barrowed, and overspent.

(06:48):
And by the seventeenth century, the empire that had once
bestrode the world like colossus was crumbling, hollowed out by
its own supposed treasure. So yeah, it's great. They hit
the jackpot, then managed to bankrupt themselves with it. Imagine
winning the lottery and ending up worse off because you

(07:09):
spent the whole thing on flamenco lessons in very very
bad box one as I pushed mine aside and have
a ship that said the lesson was clear. Treasure without
discipline is since twelfth It's quick, sam, You know that
thing everyone that was born in the seventies and maybe
early eighties were fearful of. Now let's fast forward a

(07:33):
little bit to California eighteen forty nine. It's the same
fever with just a new code of paint. Gold was
discovered at Sutter's mill, and suddenly half the planet was
on the move. Ships abandoned in San Francisco Bay, boomtowns
exploding from dirt crossroads to roaring cities, and just a
matter of weeks, men willing to risk everything for the

(07:56):
chance to pan a few flakes from a muddy stream.
And yeah, yeah, sure, some absolutely got rich, but far
more did not. Prices for basic good skyrocketed. A single
egg in San Francisco could cost as much as a
full day's wages back East disease, Yeah, guess what that was?

(08:19):
Running rampant two law was often enforced at gunpoint, and
just as quickly as the rush had begun, the best
claims were gone, leaving behind ghost towns, broken families, and
fortunes lost more to gambling tables and swindlers than probably
the mining itself. The Klondikes in eighteen nineties, that was

(08:40):
the same story as well. Men freezing to death and
you compasses for that hope, that chance at gold, while
storekeepers and shipping companies, well they made the real money.
But here's the thing. It wasn't just about precious metals.
The fever it infects markets of every kind. Let's go

(09:03):
to the sixteen thirties to the Dutch tulip mania. Really,
i'm gonna talk tulips here. They're quite beautiful flowers. They
were imported from the Ottoman Empire and they became status symbols.
In Holland, at the height of the craze, one bob
could sell for more than a skilled craftsman earned in

(09:24):
ten years. People mortgage houses just to buy bobs, and
then inevitably the bubble would burst. Prices collapsed almost overnight,
fortunes gone, reputations even worse. A flower craze had nearly
wrecked an economy. Or let's go to the south Sea

(09:48):
bubble a century later in England, investors poured their life
savings in the shares of a trading company that promised
impossible profits. Politicians hyped its, speculators swarmed to it, and
by the time it had collapsed, thousands were ruined. Isaac Newton,
yes that Isaac Newton famously lost a fortune in the crash.

(10:11):
His bitter comment still echoes. Quote. I can calculate the
motions of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of men unquote.
Now that madness is a through line. And if you
want a modern example, well, let's look at some of
the cryptocurrency bubbles for the last decade. At their peak,

(10:32):
people were selling NFTs of pixelized cartoons for way too
much money, promising endless wealth from digital scarcity, and then
whom the market fell out, and all that future gold
turned out to be in many cases is nothing but
worthless pixels. At least, hey one thing about the tulip mania.

(10:55):
They still at least had flowers to look at. But
here's I'll say it. Here's the conservative truth on the matter.
Humans don't change. Human nature doesn't evolve as fast as
the technology. Every time a new frontier opens, some bit

(11:16):
of the population has that fever that takes hold. The
promise of endless riches blinds us to the risks, the discipline,
the long term consequences, and we tell ourselves, don't worry
this time. This time will be different, But it edver,
never is. Spain thought silver would make it eternal. California

(11:41):
thought gold would make everyone rich. Alan thought flowers would
be money forever. And crypto promised liberation from governments in banks.
And while we're still in the infancy of that, and
there are some good front runners, it's still how many
have gone the way of the Dodo. So every time
it's kind of the same. The rush above all, the

(12:01):
crash and the ruin, And now here we are again
whispering once more, not about El Dorado, not about the
silver mines or dot com stocks, but about asteroids and exoplanets,
about riches floating in the void, waiting, waiting for someone
bold enough. We're reckless. There are a combination thereof to

(12:21):
claim them. Of course, history tells us how this will
end unless we learn restraint, unless we approach the next
frontier with wisdom instead of a fever. The exoplanet gold
rush will not make us gods. It will make us
gamblers in space, burning fortunes on the promise of a
treasure that probably will only bankerup us faster than our

(12:42):
current pace. And that is that is where we're really
going to begin. Because not all space rocks are created equal. Scientists, well,
they bring them into three main types, the sea type,
the S type, and the m tight. I'm not gonna

(13:03):
go in the details of it, just trust me. Let's
go to something I've mentioned on The Lost Wonder once
or twice, the Psyche sixteen. It's orbiting between Mars and Jupiter.
NASA is sending a probe there right now. Estimates suggested
holds iron and nickel worth and I'm not exaggerating quadrillions

(13:27):
of dollars at Earth market prices, or to put it
in perspective, that's enough metal to collapse. You know, the
global economy a thousand times over if you tried to
sell it all at once. And that's just one little rock.
There are millions of them scattered through the asteroid belt

(13:48):
and near Earth space, waiting like locked vaults. So one
chunk of spacecraft could make every miner on Earth obsol
e nowf asteroids are treasure chest exoplanets our entire bank vaults.

(14:09):
We've now cataloged over fivey five hundred confirmed exoplanets. Most
most are gas giants, but a growing number of rocky
worlds are. Many neptunes or super earths are being found.
Some orbit stars richer in heavy elements than our own,
which means their crust might be loaded with uranium, thorium,

(14:30):
or even elements we haven't discovered yet. Oh is it speculative, Yes,
But every time science has cracked open a new frontier,
we have found more than we expected. Think about helium
on Earth, it was a curiosity trapped among natural gas
on the Moon. Helium three exists in abundance, and it's

(14:54):
a potential fuel for fusion reactors. Suddenly the Moon it
isn't just a barren rock. It's now an energy mine.
So what happens if we stumble across element one nineteen
sitting naturally in the crust of a super earth, or
worse something No periodic table even prepares us for a

(15:14):
material that bends energy, super conduct at room temperature, or
destabilizes everything we thought we knew about physics. If history
shows us anything, the market won't wait for the science.
Investors will be selling UNOBTAININGUM futures before the first shovele
hits the alien dirt. But okay, how do you mind

(15:40):
the sky? We have to get practical here. You have
to figure out actually how to mine an asteroid. Nobody's
loading up a spaceship with pickaxes and hard hats. The
likely methods sound more like science fiction than construction manuals.
You have capture and toe strap ion engines or maybe
solar sales on a small asteroid dragging into a lunar orbit,

(16:02):
then process it there you do in situ mining, send
robotic swarms to strip mine the surface, using solar concentrators
to melt or and eject waste. What about mass drivers
if you will space rail gun because who doesn't like
to get railed flinging refined metal in its toward Earth orbit,

(16:23):
controlled of course, and by to control it, I mean,
let's hope we don't accidentally eat a two hundred ton
plutonium bullet toward Kansas. Then we also have the holy grail,
the self replicating robots, the robots that build more robots
chewing through asteroids like cosmic termites until they get a
steady flow of or now I know what you're thinking.

(16:46):
You're laughing a little bit at this, But the technology
is closer than people think. Companies like Planetary Resources and
deep space industries, which have now been absorbed into bigger firms,
we're already drafting plans in the twenty tens. NASA and
Adventures are testing solar electric propulsion systems that could haul
heavy loads, and every major spacefaring nation is watching closely.

(17:10):
I mean, let's face it, it's doable. I mean, it's
not easy, it's not cheap, but it is possible, and
that possibility alone is enough to spark a new fever.
But we haven't talked about something that might be the
real prize. The first thing worth mining in space isn't

(17:33):
platinum or gold or uranium or thorium or any of that.
It's water because water means survival for astronauts. Water means
hydrogen and oxygen for fuel. Whoever controls the gas stations
of the Solar System controls the Highway of the future.
And see type asteroids plus the poles of the Moon

(17:55):
holds millions of tons of it. So if you want
to picture the first space rush, don't think of a
miner hauling a chunk of gold out of the creator.
Think of a tanker ship guzzling ice and spitting out
fuel for the next rocket fleet. It's admittedly far less glamorous.
That's probably more valuable. So we can't dodge the minecraft

(18:22):
joke here. Humanity is basically planning to play creative mode
with real asteroids, digging tunnels, harvesting blocks, stacking resources. Except
instead of maybe diamonds, you're pulling out platinum bars worth billions.
And it said, you know, maybe creepers blowing you up.
It's micro meteorites and radiation getting you. As hard as

(18:45):
it may be be to think about explain. Imagine if
you will explaining this to your great grandfather. Yeah, I'm
more us a farm to buy stocking a company that's
going to put minecraft in orbit. But that's history waiting
to repeat itself. So yes, the science makes this possible,

(19:07):
but possibility is not permission. The fact that we can
to an asteroid doesn't necessarily mean one should. The fact
that exoplanets may hide new elements doesn't mean markets are
ready for them. Every empire that's rushed headlong in the
resource wealth without restraint collapse under its own weight. So yes,

(19:29):
children crave the minds, even if they're space minds. So yes,
the science frontier is quite dazzling. It promises riches beyond measure.
But science doesn't change human nature. And if we leap
it into this exoplanet gold rush without the proper wisdom,
the physics may let's be fake, may be new, but
the outcome will be the same as Spain, as California,

(19:54):
and as the South Sea. But if there's one thing
that history does prove, it's as the rush starts long
before the first pickaxe ever hits the rock. So let's
start with the headlines. For the last decade, business magazines
have flowed at the idea the first world's first trillionaire

(20:14):
being a space miner. I know, did you say minor
or minor. We'll go with the E in the minor. Here.
The logic is simple, find the right asteroid, crack it
open like an egg, and suddenly you're wealthier than an
oil tycoon or tech mogul ever could have dreamed of.
That said, it sounds plausible until you actually start running

(20:35):
the numbers. A single M type asteroid could crash the
platinum market overnight. If platinum stops being scarce, it stops
being valuable. Suddenly that trillionaire is holding a mountain of
shiny metal that nobody wants at yesterday's prices. But as
we all know if you've ever paid attention to the
stock market, markets don't wait for reality. They mine in speculatives.

(21:00):
They fantasize, and speculation has a way of turning into
a frenzy. And this is how you end up with
a Wall Street trader mortgaging his house to buy element
one to nineteen futures or mineral that does not even
exist yet. But let's be honest here, during the California

(21:24):
gold Rush, some of the very first and biggest fortunes
weren't made in mining, but in selling shovels, tents, eggs,
The inflated prices impacted it long before the gold dust
hit anyone's pouch, and you have to imagine in an
exoplanet gold rush, the same thing is going to happen,

(21:47):
but only at an orbital scale. You'll see companies selling
shares and asteroid claims, futures and planetary minerals and options
on the speculative of elements. Holy changes sprung up before
the first rock is tugged into lunar orbit. And once
again we've seen this playbook before. Speculators didn't care whether

(22:13):
the gold was real. They cared that someone else is
willing to pay or tomorrow. So now imagine this being
all amplified by the sheer size of space, derivatives built
on derivatives, hedge funds, shortening oxygen futures because someone found
a water rich asteroid. Day traders screaming in the microphones

(22:34):
about whether uranium on Kepler forty five to two B
is a buy or a cell. As absurd as it sounds,
it's sadly going to be inevitable. Humanity doesn't just dig,
We bet on who's successful at the dig, and with
trillions on the line, this fever will probably spread faster

(22:56):
than any gold Russian history, and yeah, some pour into
will absolutely end up explaining to his boss that they
just lost five billion dollars because the minecraft asteroid patch
notes just dropped and did not have what they thought. Now,
the economic paradox of resource rushes is this, the more

(23:19):
you find, the less it's worth. So Spain's silver curse
is the perfect example. They thought they had the infinite wealth,
and instead they got inflation, dependence, and decline. Now picture that,
but only globally. What happens when plutonium stops being rare,

(23:40):
when uranium floods the market, when helium three fuels every reactor. Now,
of course, in every rush there are winners, but they're
rarely the dreamers. It's, as I mentioned, the merchants, not
the people doing the work. In the dot com boom,

(24:01):
it was the company selling servers, not the websites themselves.
In the exoplanet gold rush, the winners may be the
ones building rockets, selling the real estate in space, and
you know, maybe ensuring the mining fleets themselves. And the
losers will be the speculators who bought too late, the

(24:23):
nations have bought maybe that too heavily, and the workers
left behind when the endancy and industry crashed. And yet,
knowing all of this, the uncomfortable truth is it will happen.
It's inevitable. Part of us will be struck with the fever.

(24:46):
The bubble will inflate, and trillionaire headlines will scream, and
then reality will bite you in the ass. The question
isn't whether it will happen. The question is will we
be wise enough to manage it? Because if there is
one thing history guarantees, it's that human nature doesn't change.

(25:09):
Technologies evolve, rocket sore, treaty, chef, but greed. Greed seems
to survive. And every frontier will look like salvation at first,
and then it will blind us and won't feel the treasuries.
It will warp characters, It'll make us reckless and patience shortsighted.

(25:33):
And it's kind of scary to think about. Because the
frontier holds promise the freedom to expand, the independence to
build new colonies, new industries, maybe even possibly new civilizations.
Space could be the great safety valve of human ambition,

(25:55):
the same way the American frontier gave restless souls a
place to build, settle, and survive. On the other hand,
infinity tempts, folly attempts, greed attempts, empires to overreach, corporations
to gamble, and individuals to risk everything on a dream

(26:16):
they can't touch. And this treasure will test nations, and
usually when nations are tested, bad things will happen. And
this is where the story pivots, because I've tried to
tell and explain the fever, but I want to go

(26:41):
into act two and show some of the sickness what
I'm calling the platinum problem, scarcity in abundance crashing headlong
in the markets that they were never designed for anything
close to an infinity scale. So if you will, before

(27:04):
we head into that, let's imagine I don't know, Zap
Branigan standing on the bridge of the nimbus bragging about
staking a claim on Kepler four or five. Two. Be
imagine Fry buying in and say shut up and take
my money as he buys stocks in asteroid platinum. But

(27:26):
the whole time in the back you have bender running
and orbital futures. Scam. History has a way of repeating itself,
even when cartoons are trying to tell us. Now, typically

(27:55):
when people picture the first spase mind, they imagine probably
a robotic claw hauling on a chunk of platinum the
size of a house, gleaming metal, instant riches humanities. First trillion,
if not quadrillion runs through their heads. But it's water again,
that will be the most important one that you know,

(28:18):
might not rewrite physics, but let's space. It's the most ordinary,
overlooked resource on Earth. And now it's going to become
the single most precious commodity in orbit that we will
need because in space water isn't just life, it's fuel.

(28:40):
So yeah, well, you know, we'll make jokes, and you know,
somewhere down the road, maybe our great grandchild will be
telling their kids that, you know, oh hey, remember the
great ice Flares of twenty eighty five. Sounds epic until
you had the footnote. It was basically the you know,
ice Pirates movie, but maybe with less polya dur and

(29:00):
cool robots. But we have to think of it this way.
It water makes sense. Survival always comes first. But once
we've conquered that, that's when the real trouble will begin,
because history has already taught us that sudden riches can

(29:20):
kill an empire faster than famine. And you really do
have to think about things such as asteroid like sixteenth
psych containing more iron, nickel, and precious metals in all
the mines and known human history. Bring even a fraction
of that into circulation, and you will collapse industries overnight.

(29:44):
Platinum will no longer buys a wedding ring, it buys
a bus ticket. Uranium, once jealously guarded for a strategic value,
could become so cheap that every second rate regime on
earth could gold a bomb. The sad truth of it
is scarcity breeds discipline. Abundance tends to breed corruption, and

(30:07):
when the floodgates open, it doesn't make us stronger, tempts
us to waste, to gamble, and depend on treasures instead
of working. Just look at any welfare program anyone has
ever done. And this is the paradox. Economists already see coming.
They're more resources we mind, the less valuable they will become.

(30:33):
And yet even knowing this, the fever will never go away.
Investors will not stop, corporations will not slow down, and governments,
they sure as heck, will not restrain themselves. The rush
will accelerate even as the profit's shrink. Because far too
often human nature has never known when to quit. And

(30:58):
that's the platinum problem. Riches that destroy value treasures, that
destabilizes nations in abundance that feels like salvation but ends
up corroding like poison. So it does leave us with
one question is whether we'll see the pattern in time

(31:18):
or whether we'll plunge headfirst into that same trap that
has swallowed every empire before us. Because if history is
any god, you know, you know we are going to
scrooge McDuck headfirst into this So on Earth, platinum is

(31:41):
so rare it's become a cultural shorthand for wealth. Platinum
credit cards, platinum wedding bands, platinum records. Not only about
two hundred tons are mined each year, barely enough to
keep up with demands and electronics, you know, cattle converters
and such in medicine, yes, medicine, trust me on that one.

(32:05):
But in space, one decent asteroid could yield millions of tons,
enough to crash the market overnight. Platinum wedding rings would
all of a sudden lose their status and value. Electronics
already ridiculously cheap in many regards, become even cheaper, and

(32:25):
that multi billion dollar mining industry that exists today would
become a ghost town. Because it's an awful paradox when
we think about it. The moment we succeed, we fail.
The more we pull from the heavens, the less it's
worth on Earth. Well, let's talk about that uranium problem.

(32:53):
Uranium is tightly controlled. It fuels nuclear power plants in
weapons grade forms, some of the deadliest machines humans have
ever built, except for liberal white women. Scarcity is part
of the safeguard. Enrichment is expensive and sources are limited.
But if space suddenly dumps an ocean of uranium in

(33:14):
the market, that's just not only an economic shift, that's
a geopolitical earthquake. Nuclear weapons could become accessible to the
regimes that never dreamed of affording them proliferation and stability braankmanship.
The very abundance that makes uranium cheap also makes nuclear
armageddon more likely. This isn't necessarily about wealth. This is

(33:41):
well danger disguise as prosperity. What about lithium and cobal
They're the backbones of our battery powered age, electric vehicle, smartphones, laptops,
and once again, scarcity drives the costs for these and nations.
Some are poor with I know word he was making

(34:02):
a joke about children craving the minds. But many of
these are countries that, you know, dictatorships that exploit children
for this purpose. What happens when they no longer make
money from it? Because those nations are no longer able
to export it at a decent price. If space delivers
endless lithium, the global ev market flips upside down. Nations

(34:24):
like Chile and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which depend
on mining revenues, see their economies implode. Jobs will vanish
sometimes that's a good thing, and governments will destabilize. And
rare earth elements Lantinum, Neodian Europeum, the ones that make

(34:46):
our magnet screens and defense tech work. They're called rare
because they're hard to extract, not because they're truly scarce.
I lead the market with asteroid versions in China's current
dominance will collapse once again. Maybe not necessarily bad thing,
but this will do all of it, entire supply chains
across the world overnight. Now people don't think that when

(35:14):
they hear infinite riches that there's a problem. You know,
They'll picture the cheaper cars, the cleaner energy, and the
end of scarcity. They hardly take the time to picture
nations collapsing, industries dying, and warlords buying more heads on clearance.

(35:35):
It is the same exact blind spot Spain had with
its silver, the same blindness every empire has when it
confuses treasure for stability. But let's be honest. When people
hear mining asteroids, they don't think about uranium proliferation or

(35:56):
lithium supply chains. They think about deep shafts in the
alien rock. And they're not wrong. But much like humanity,
and considering this is episode sixty nine, I'd be remiss
not to point out that we as humans, I know,

(36:18):
I just cursed that myself has always been eager to
go deeper than it should, only often to regret what
it finds. The more drills in the window aside, though,
the truth is simple, abundance doesn't guarantee prosperity. More often
than not, it just guarantees that collapse. Let's go back

(36:42):
to things like California. Before most minors ever struck, gold
prices in San Francisco exploded, you had the cost of eggs, shovels, boots.
The speculation reached fever pitch before a single man ever
washed a nugget out of the stream. If you think
it don't happen in space, you're fooling yourself. Companies will

(37:05):
start selling claims to asteroids back by a little more
than a press release in a star chart. Investors will
buy futures in platinum, uranium, and yes, even water ice,
betting on resources that may not be extracted for decades.

(37:26):
It really is the south Sea Bubble all over again.
The south Sea Company promised impossible riches from trade in
South America. Shares went through the roof and then collapse,
ruining thousands. One company even sold stock under the slogan
quote a company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage,

(37:50):
but nobody to know what it is unquote. Investors lined
up anyway. I mean, seriously, congratulations, you just spend ten
billion dollars to own a rock you can't even point
too on a star map. Bravo guys. That is the

(38:15):
level of madness we could be heading for. And of course,
once the claims are sold, Wall Street will do what
Wall Street always does, build layers, derivatives, EFTs, hedge funds,
baskets of asteroid futures. Want to invest in platinum without
betting on one asteroid. Buy a basket fund, want uranium
futures hedge with rare earths, There'll be a product for that.

(38:38):
Want to invest in asteroid mining without asteroid risk, Congratulations,
There'll be an EFT that tracks the idea of asteroid
mining all the time. Speculators won't care if the platinum
is even real or if the uranium ever makes it
back to Earth. They'll care about the price tomorrow versus

(38:58):
the price today. That's all speculation, ever is. And we've
seen it time and time and time again. During the
housing bubble, people bought and sold mortgage backed securities while
ever looking at the house. During the crypto craates, fortunes
restaked one coins with no backing at all, and an

(39:19):
exoplanet gold rush, fortunes will be made and lost on
rocks floating millions of miles away that you can't even
see what the best telescope on Earth. And when that
bubble bursts and all it will, it won't be a
few eccentric billionaires who lose. It'll be, of course, the pensions,

(39:39):
the retirement funds, the small investors who all believe the
hype and had the fever. And there's yet another layer
to this, betting on resources that don't even exist yet.

(40:00):
Don't think they won't sell futures on possibilities such as
element one nineteen because it could be a room temperature
superconductor exotic alloys no periodic table has ever ever dreamed up.
If an astrophysicist who you know, maybe gets things wrong
all the time and got rid of a planet, speculate

(40:23):
about it in a conference paper, you can bet there
will be an IPO for it within a year. It
is the same playbook as the nineteenth century railroad mania.
Companies sold stocks and railway lines that had no tracks,
no trains, and often not even a plan. But yeah,
it's investors poured in any way, all because they couldn't

(40:49):
stand to miss out on the next big thing. And
like I said, just like every other bubble, there will
absolutely be winners, the early speculators who got in, hype
the price, and sell before the collapse. And it's the
stories of these guys and gals who win that does

(41:09):
nothing to diminish the fever of everyone else. Than next
time something comes along and it's these sorry to be
it's these losers too that they're always the same one
who always lose. They're the small investors who buy too late,
the nations that build budgets on speculative resource revenues, and

(41:32):
more importantly, the workers whose pensions get tied to these bubbles.
It really is like the tulip mania, where farmers mortgage
their land to buy bulbs worth ten years wages. When
the market collapse, they lost everything. What about the dot

(41:55):
com boss where people bought stocking companies with no profits,
no products, and somehow not even websites, yet only to
watch the savings vanish when the bubble burst. The sad
truth is bubbles tend to always punish the vulnerable. Most

(42:16):
those with power often will find a parachute. Those without
are left in the wreckage. Because every bubble pops everyone,
the Southsea toll ups, railroads, dot coms, even most of
the crypto coins. Every time the same fever takes hold
the same height blinds investors, and to think that the

(42:38):
exoplanet gold rush bubble will not be the biggest of
the mall will be the cruelest joke of the mall,
because there will be no denying that infinite resources can
be promised here. Infinite markets will spun spun out of
thin air, and of course that speculation piled on then

(43:01):
nothing more than rocks in the dark. If it's a lesson,
we we just never seem to learn. Speculative many approves
human nature hasn't changed technologies. Every time we see a
SpaceX launch, we're getting one inch closer to places we've

(43:24):
never been before. And you can see I'm guilty of
it myself because I'm a dreamer of space. Every starship
launch you see human nature speculative desness. One day we'll
get back to the Moon, or for the first time,
depending on your point of view, we'll get to Mars.

(43:46):
God only knows what we'll find in Mars. Hey, maybe
maybe we can get to Europe, But what will Europe?
I have I heard one of the moons you know,
might be diamond crusted. Every time there's a hint of
that next technology that comes in, the speculation follows, and

(44:09):
the fact that yes, every rush has its winner, but
every rush has its losers, and the trick is they're
never the ones often people expect. When Spain pulled silver
out of the Andes, it wasn't the miners who got rich.

(44:30):
Most of them actually died in the mine shafts. The
profits went to the crown, to the merchants, to the
bankers and Antwerp who loaned money at insane interest rates.
When California was gripped by goldfiever, most miners walked away broke.
The real fortunes went to the storekeepers. And every rush,

(44:51):
the loudest streamer usually ends up with nothing but dust
and death. So who wins the exoplanet gold Russian? Who
will lose? First? We have the obvious winners, the rocket manufacturers.
Every mining company needs rockets, stations, landers and tankers. You've

(45:12):
got SpaceX, Blue Origins, national agencies, all all of course
cash in. It's at classic selling shovels in a gold
rush scenario. You know, the shovel will cost two hundred
million dollars a launch. Next, you'll have the insurers and
legal firms step in. Someone has to write the contracts,
you know, arbitrate the disputes and sure the cargo and

(45:35):
fight the inevitable lawsuits. Space will generate more paperwork than platinum,
and somehow lawyers seem to always win. Then you'll have
the infrastructure builders, the companies that build orbital depots, fueling stations,
and smelting facilities. The first serious profits won't come, of course,

(45:58):
from hauling platinum. They'll come from selling ice as fuel.
Oxygen is life support, and orbital space is the real estate.
And of course the early speculators who get in and
get out before the crash, they'll win. And along the
way they're gonna hype that dream. They'll sell their shares
at the peak and walk away with even more money.

(46:24):
And once again, the losers are the same who always lose.
The ordinary investors who buy too late, chase the dream
after the insiders have already crashed out, or in the
process that cashing out, a few of them will mortgage
their houses, empty out their pensions, and watch it all
vanish within a week. When the bubble burst, nations that

(46:47):
rely on the resource expert exports will suffer, Kazakhstan, Chile, Congo,
Entire governments will stabilize. It's kind of crazy to think
that even a chance, the major powers wouldn't be safe
because the United States, Russia, China, they'll pour billions in

(47:08):
the mining projects that may never pay off, leaving the
average taxpayer holding the bill. Because history is littered with
the bones of great powers that chased treasure and came
back in debt. But as always, and I know this
has sounded very communists, it's not. This is just factual.

(47:29):
The biggest losers will always be the workers, the men
and women who believe the dream, who will sign up
to operate machinery and orbit and who gamble when stock
options as part of their play. And when the market crash,
and when it will, they won't have golden parachutes. They'll
be left drifting, wondering what's next. And that's the hard truth.

(47:55):
Wealth concentrated and speculation always floats upward. And it's I
don't mean to sound discouraging this episode, but don't forget
last episode I talked about immortality. You have to pay
for immortality, and even if you do live forever, you're

(48:15):
gonna see this all pan out over and over and
over again. It's why we have twenty four hour rules
on social media, or at least should be, because everything
changes within that first twenty four hours. It's often that

(48:36):
twenty four or forty eight, maybe a week later, when
the dust settles, after the real information comes out, and
after way too many people have already spent their their
own valuations of their you know, intelligence, You always see
who comes out to winners and who always comes out
to losers, who was peddling things on the speculative market,

(49:00):
and who just waited for you know, the information to
actually come out, and those who well never play the game.
The sobering truth is scarcity disciplines us, and abundance will
always tempt us, and speculation will always ruin us. So

(49:29):
the question isn't whether we'll mind the stars. We will.
The question is whether we'll mind with discipline or decay.
Will we see an abundance as a tool to maybe,
somehow this time strengthen civilization, to baby filled with a
plan carefully to innovate, wisely, plan for future generations. And

(49:52):
I know you're all laughing at me because we all know,
we all know it'll be a quick fix. They get rich,
scheme and a chance to indulge or greed at a
planetary scale. History offers lessons. Nations that tempted tempered abundance

(50:17):
with discipline endured. Look at Rome. Yeah, Rome would eventually fall,
but at a height. They built roads, aqueducts, and laws.
It was when they quit doing those things that they
kind of went to the wayside. In the United States

(50:38):
in its frontiers days, balanced expansion with constitutional order. The
strength came not from the treasures but from restraint. So
once again left with the exo planet gold rush paradox
or promised infinite treasure, but without restraint it will deliver

(51:01):
infinite ruin. Will be left with a bigger problem, one
we truly haven't thought about and faced before. Not what
we mind, not how much we find, but who owns infinity?

(51:28):
And with that we will be back in a few minutes.

Speaker 4 (51:38):
She came in la like a fur as, dressed in
velvet and sin.

Speaker 5 (51:45):
With the map tude isside and the dear honor Grin.

Speaker 4 (51:52):
Said there's gold in this mountains.

Speaker 6 (51:55):
And body burning stone. You right there and never tie long.
The room was shanging boats on.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
The floor.

Speaker 5 (52:14):
That suched her head and back for she left the
Spain runs on a stolen and west for.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
The trail, baby trail.

Speaker 7 (52:47):
We tence to the sweat, lit the walls like stars,
training sins like scars, and a lover's bizarre.

Speaker 4 (53:01):
Every cast was a contract.

Speaker 3 (53:04):
Every crowd was a cause actus like the truth, and.

Speaker 4 (53:10):
She been like a colus.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
We signed no favors.

Speaker 4 (53:22):
To say where do you wanted and take it down.
And when she said you got the skin, I am
forever man A drill Baby, drill baby, take me down

(53:53):
team for see translate, tangle and no please hot line
fort con nothing like It's wild Please trill baby, true,

(54:18):
take your time, trust all day, the fun. It's the
way so well, yall, it's pay stay unside.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
Hugely, baby, trill, and welcome back.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
As you may notice, it's I think fifty five here
on the East Coast, and I'm just now getting to
the intermission songs because there's no Sunday Night with alt
or Well until I think October, so I'm doing a
couple weeks in the shows and I'm very passionate about

(55:11):
this one. I hope you've picked up on this on
the first half. And as I said before going into
a mission, who owns Infinity? Because if you've heard any
of my Lost Wanderer episodes, you know just how much

(55:33):
of an open ended question that is. Because right now,
when it comes to ownership in space, the crown jewel
of international law is a nineteen sixty seven Outer Space Treaty,
and that was born at the height of the Cold War,

(55:54):
when the US and Civic Union were staring each other
down the nuclear weapons and planning that first lunar land.
Both sides wanted to plant flags, and probably more. Both
sides wanted to claim glory. Both sides also knew if
outer space becomes just another battlefield, humanity might not survive,
so they actually signed a deal. The Outer Space Treaty

(56:18):
banned nations from claiming sovereignty over celestial bodies. No one
can own the Moon, Mars, or asteroids. No military bases,
no weapons of mass destruction, no territorial conquests. Outer space
and theory belonged to everyone, the province of all mankind.
On one paper, it's lofty. It reads like star Trek,

(56:40):
no empires, no borders, just peaceful exploration for the benefit
of all humanity. But like star Trek, you often run
into other things. But the problem is treaties are only
as strong as the will to actually enforce them, and
when we look at the world's history, paper guarantees don't
stop people from chasing treasure. The Treaty of Tortoise Alis

(57:05):
was once paper two, and let's face it, the Outer
Space Treaty was never designed for mining. In nineteen sixty seven,
the idea of holding platinum out of an asteroid sounded
like something you would find in a kid sci fi comic.
The treaty solved the problem of nukes and orbit, but
it kind of punted the question on resources. What happens

(57:28):
when a private company scoops up ten million tons of nickel?
Treaty doesn't say what happens when a nation licensed that
company and profits off the hall Treaty doesn't say, And
that gap is what really makes it fragile. Now. Yes,
In nineteen seventy nine, the United Nations tried to fix

(57:51):
the loophole with the Moon Agreement. It declared the Moon
and its resources to be the quote common heritage of
mankind quote. Any mining, any exploitation was supposed to be
managed collectively, with profits shared for the benefit of all nations. Yeah,
I know, it sounds noble. Almost no one signed it.

(58:16):
The United States, Russia, and China, you know, the three
big guys in space right now, all refused to them.
It was too restrictive. Why share profits with everyone when
you're the one taking the risk and doing the work.
As a result, the Moon Agreement had no teeth. It's
a treaty and name only ignored by those who actually,

(58:38):
you know, it really matters to the most. So right now,
the legal status of space is this, no one can
own it, but everyone is maneuvering to find ways around
that rule. Yeah, Ordy, you're probably right, because it'll probably
be cheaper on the moon now. Private companies lobby their

(58:59):
government for licenses. Governments, past nations, past national law saying
sure you can mine asteroids, will recognize your rights. Don't
think that will happen. The US did it in twenty fifteen,
and Luxembourg did it in twenty seventeen, and of course
Japan followed suit. The patchwork grows, every nation carving out

(59:21):
expectations while still claiming they respect the treaty. And this
is how loo Pole's turn into law. Everyone says they're
honoring the Outer Space Treaty, but in practice they're just
building legal scaffolding for ownership without clarity, chaos will fill
the void, and a treaty that leaves too much unsaid
is instability. It's an invitation to conflict and to exploit. Now,

(59:47):
if you have listened to my other show, The Loss
on our podcast, you've heard me talk about space not
just as a playground for science, but has proven grounds
for humanity. I've said it before. The laws were right
now will echo for centuries. Just like maritime law shaped empires,
space law will shape civilizations. Now. Whatever you think of

(01:00:07):
the Outer Space Treaty, it was a good first step,
but it was written for an era of rockets and
not miners. It solved yesterday's danger's nuclear weapons, but left
tomorrow's dangers wide open, and tomorrow's danger kind of hate
saying it is ownership, because sooner or later someone will

(01:00:28):
mine an asteroid, someone will haul back metals, and someone
will cash the check. And when they do, the paper
promises of nineteen sixty seven will either have to be
enforced or they'll just simply be ignored. And history often
tells us ignored is more likely.

Speaker 7 (01:00:52):
Not.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
On the high seas, shipping companies have long used what's
called flags of convenience. Instead of registering a vessel in
their own country, they register it in nations with weaker
regulations Panama, Liberia, the Marshall Islands. That way they get
the dodge those little things such as labor law, safety rules,
and probably the most important taxes. Now imagine the same

(01:01:18):
logic in orbit. A mining company based in New York
or Tokyo doesn't register its asteroid fleet at home. Instead
it flies the flag of a nation with no real oversight,
you know, a convenient little island state happy to cash
registration fees while you know, looking the other way. If
it sounds far fetched, it isn't. It's already being discussed,

(01:01:39):
and it would shred the Outer Space Treaty in practice,
even while everyone insists they're respecting it in principle. And
we've got to be honest. If there's one thing more
renewable than asteroid platinum, it's lawyers figuring out new ways
to breed loopholes. And of course you have corporations acting

(01:02:04):
as private actors while serving national agendas. Don't believe me.
I have a segment on Lost Wonder that talks about
it all the flip and time. A company might be
nominally independent but funded, supported and guided by its home
government if it makes a claim it's a private enterprise
or is it state sovereignty by proxy? The Outer Space

(01:02:27):
Treaty forbids nations from claiming territory, but what if their
corporations do it for them. It's the same trick Empires
use with trading company the East India company wasn't technically
the British crown, but it ships carried the Union jack
It's army's fault, wars, and its profits sure as hell
did fuel the Empire. If that wasn't a corporate front

(01:02:50):
for state power, I don't know what was. So do
we really think asteroid mining will be any different? Now?
Some countries have already started laying the groundwork. In twenty fifteen,
the United States passed the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act,
declaring the US citizens engaged in space mining have the

(01:03:10):
right to own what they extract. In twenty seventeen, Luxembourg
followed suit, openly advertising itself as a hub for asteroid
mining companies. Bravo. Luxembourg and Japan passed similar legislation in
twenty twenty one. No, these laws don't claim territory, but
they claim resources. It's a nice little dance maneuver around

(01:03:34):
the Outer Space treaty. No, no, we're not planning flags.
We're just recognizing ownership of what you bring home.

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Of course, once nation finally do break ground, others oil
of course follow. The US says its companies can own
asteroid resources. Do you really think China will not do
the same Russia. If they still exist by the time
they can do this, will they follow? Smaller nations of
course will scramble to pass law so they don't get
left behind, and the treaty will remain technically intact because

(01:04:09):
there's technically no flags on Mars. But ownership by loophole
is still ownership, and when fortunes are at stake, loopholes
will multiply. No, of course, flags are convenience corporate fronts,
national loopholes. They all point to the same reality. The

(01:04:30):
exo planet gold rush won't be governed by pay for promises.
It will be governed by power, by who gets their first,
who has the resources to defend their claims, and who
has the nastiest weapon of all the lawyers to write
the contracts afterwards. In history, as once more offers the precedent.

(01:04:53):
The seas were once declared a commons free to all,
but that didn't stop nations from carving spheres of influence,
corporations from season trade routes, and empires from fighting wars
over shipping lanes. I'm looking at you, War of eighteen twelve.
This team will happen in space, and when it does,
the question won't be. What does what does that treaty say?

(01:05:14):
It'll be? Go ahead and try to enforce it. And
this is this is why sovereigntry will matter. This is
why I think restraint will matter. Without clear ownership, chaos
isn't just probable, it's more inevitable. And while the treaty
trap gives us that noble flowersh language, many like, it's

(01:05:39):
really toothless. Loopholes expose the fragility, and unless nations act
with discipline, the gold rush of the extra planets will
just follow the same paths every frontier before it, noble
flowering words, when paper shattered by reed and weaponry and practice.

(01:06:01):
Now capitalism won't wait for miners and shovels. It builds
the markets, builds the markets the moments, there's even the
hint of commodity, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
And in twenty twenty five, those markets aren't science fiction anymore.
They're already looking at us from over the horizon. Because

(01:06:22):
the earliest tradable resource in space wasn't platinum, or isn't
platinum or uranium or some exotic new element. It's fuel, propellant,
plain old rocket juice on Earth. You buy it at
the pump in orbit. It's the lifeblood of every mission.
Without fuel, satellite stye, rocket stall, and spacecraft drift into
the graveyard belt. And for far too many years, every

(01:06:43):
satellite launch was a one way trip, pack all the
possible repellent you'd ever need, and when it ran dry,
your billion dollar satellite was just space junk waiting for
al to get his company started. But now companies are
standing up the infrastructure who deliver fuel in orbit. Yes,
orbital gas stations are going to be a thing. One
American startup even published a price sheet up to one

(01:07:06):
hundred kilogams of propellant delivered to geostationary orbit for about
twenty million dollars. That's not a dream, this is an
actual contract. And once you've posted price for fuel, guess
what you've got The markings of a market, Contracts, futures,

(01:07:27):
hedging against delays. These are the bones of orbital wall Street.
Now the second commodity is one you may not necessarily
think of on first though, because that second commodity is time.
A few years ago Northwrok Grooman pulled off something extraordinary.

(01:07:48):
They launched a spacecraft. The mission extension vehicle that docked
with an aging satellite, latched on and gave it a
new lease on life five more years of service, fault
and paid for. Orbit life extension isn't theoretical anymore. It
is an actual product, a service contract, something that can
be booked, insured, and yes, even traded in financial terms.

(01:08:12):
It's the securization of space. A spacecraft lace span is
no longer set in stone. It is now negotiable, and
negotiable things can be commodified. But what about that big,
amazing satellite that we see most nights the Moon. In

(01:08:37):
February twenty twenty four, for the first time since Apollo.
If you are a not a moon denier, an American
lander touched down softly on the lunar surface. It wasn't
a government rocket, it was a commercial one. Sure it
carried NASA's payloads, but it also carried the price sheet
for a new market kilograms deliverable to them. And that

(01:09:03):
is a language markets understand pay load capacity, price per
kilogram delivery window. Once you can quote it, you can
contract it. Once you can contract it, you can speculate
on it, and sooner or later you'll be able to
hedge against lunar delivery delays the same way airline they
hedge their jet fuel prices. And I know I mentioned

(01:09:25):
it earlier, but ow waiting on his company built up.
Because garbage in space, the debris and cleanup, is becoming
a service. Some will call space debris a growing crisis.
We do have a fair number of dead satellites, rocket
bodies and shards of collisions all throughout. Every piece is

(01:09:48):
a bullet at orbital velocity. There are companies now designing
spacecraft to chase down that debris, capture it and deorbit
it safely. The first contracts are already signed in Europe
and Japan, so that makes it a service which now
has value, which is now tradable. So put it together

(01:10:13):
in the pattern is obvious fuel in orbit, priced and deliverable,
satellite extension, proven and contractable kilograms to the Moon, flown
and invoiced, debris removal and development and contract it. These
aren't fairy tales, they're actual today products. And once again,

(01:10:34):
if you have a product, it can be ensured, financed
and securitized. The language of markets is already steeping in
the footsteps of orbit. So no, we don't technically have
a commodities, exchange trading asteroid platinum. That's still probably decades away,
if it ever actually becomes feasible. But we've already had

(01:10:55):
the opening active orbital Wall Street, the slow, somber transformation
of services, and the securities norms are already evolving in
de facto property rights. The Artemis accord, something I start
every Lost Wanderer show with when a new signee comes on,

(01:11:17):
creates safety zones around lunar operations, temporary, cooperative but non sovereign,
but in practice they look a lot more like easements
or operational territories, the kind of thing investors recognizes good
enough when it comes to financing. And that's how ownership starts,
not with grand declarations, but with practical fictions. Everyone agrees

(01:11:39):
to treat as real. So, whether you like it or not,
Orbital Wall Street is already here, not as a flashy
treating floor in low earth orbit, but as contract services
in the norms that quietly turn infinity into cash flows.

(01:12:00):
And it isn't a question anymore whether these markets will form,
because they have the question is whether laws, sovereignty and
order can keep up, or will greed outpace governance. And
let's once again, face it, history has taught us anything.
Markets always arrived first, and law always limps in after,

(01:12:23):
and when ownership is uncertain, chaos fills the vacuum. In
the New World, it was Papa bules and imperial flags
that see it was trading companies and privateers. Every time
the law stumbled behind greed, the people would pay the price.
Space will be no different. And yes, the Outer Space

(01:12:44):
Treaty was a noble attempt to head off a new
age of empires, and the Moon Agreement tried to buy
nations to the ideal of common heritage by the people
who can't even build wells. Yet. Nations will of course
carve out loopholes in corporate rations, will sharpen their contracts
to have will been all of it, and orbital Wall

(01:13:05):
Street will begin pricing services long before anyone has ever
touched an actual asteroid. Treaties will do nothing to stop
the exoplanet gold rush. The rush will not be contained
by markets, and it will only be governed if nations
assert clear authority. Well, let's face it, authority is costly,

(01:13:31):
requires presence, enforcement, and sacrifice, and history once again suggested
that we may not be willing to pay any or
all of that price. It's easier, way easier to let
loopholes do all the work and let the market set
the rules, to let paper promises stand in for discipline. Now,

(01:13:58):
all of this the first seventy four minutes. If you're
still listening, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:14:05):
All of this.

Speaker 2 (01:14:07):
Is all based on the assumption that humanity is alone
in this future marketplace, that the only players are nations, corporations,
and investors. But what if they're not? What if the

(01:14:29):
exoplanet gold rush brings us face to face not with
just not just with resources, but with neighbors, not with
rocks to mind, but with rivals to trade with or
compete against. Guess what? Treaties don't cover any of that

(01:14:51):
bluepoles right now? Don't even imagine that orbital Wall Street
doesn't appraise it. And yet, if the universe is as
fast and strange as we believe, the name may come
when the question isn't who owns infinity, but who will
have to bargain with it? And that's where we're headed next.

(01:15:14):
Because you thought I was going to do an extra
planet gold rush without talking about aliens. Hi, I'm Jeff,
I'm from Alpha Centauri. Pleasure to meet you, So the
question becomes, what if we're not the first miners in space?
You know, European explorers didn't discover new lands. They stumbled

(01:15:37):
into existing trade networks. In many cases, the Aztecs traded
obsidian and cacao. The Chinese sailed vast treasure fleets. Africa
had gold routes that stretched across deserts and oceans. When
outsiders arrived, they weren't walking into a blank slate, they
were crashing someone else's market. Technically, why will space be

(01:15:59):
in different If the galaxy is as old as we
think it is, and if life emerges even occasionally I
won't cover the Drake equation today, then the odds are
good that someone else has already been here first. Maybe
not in our solar system, though who's to say. It's
certainly you know, a wide neighborhood when you think about

(01:16:21):
it in universe terms, and a billionaires is plenty of
time for another civilization to climb the latter, master technology
and start harvesting the heavens. Astronomers already hunt for these
signs of industrial activity in the stars. We look for
dice and swarms, fast arrays of satellites soaking up a
star's energy. We model karda chef civilizations measuring progress by

(01:16:45):
energy use. Some scientists even scan for chemical traces and
exoplanet atmospheres that might hint at the sign of manufacturing.
It's speculation, admittedly, but so was astra married mining fifty
years ago, and here we are sketching contracts for orbital
propellants in twenty twenty five. So imagine the moment when

(01:17:08):
humanity stretches into the stars and discovers were late to
the party. Imagine finding an asteroid belt that's already been
stripped bare, a gas giant whose helium has been siphoned,
a star dimmed by swarms of collectors, infinity already claimed.

(01:17:30):
Now for being honest, prudence means preparing for competition, not utopia.
It would of course be wonderful to imagine benevolent alien
smiling and eager to share. I mean, science fiction loves
that fantasy, and I don't think human history is necessarily

(01:17:51):
that different from alien history. Every encounter between civilizations with
unequal power has tilted towards exploitation, not equality. Why would
the laws of economics change just because the players are extraterrestrial?
If there is a galactic marketplace. Then humanity won't enter
it as its masters. We'll enter it's as rookies. And

(01:18:15):
rookies are the ones usually having to carry the bags,
and they don't get to set the rules. So that's
the cosmic question that this exoplanet gold rush will force
upon us. It isn't just about how much platinum is
out there or how quickly we can build the orbital
wall Street to really matter, it's about what happens if
the rush brings us face to face with neighbors. These

(01:18:39):
neighbors who maybe they've been mining longer, we've built markets
older than our species. You might see Earth not as
a partner, but now as a new resource in the
orbital wall Street. Yes, we've always imagined in our minds
the gold rush has a race against ourselves in other
countries here on Earth. But what if it isn't. And

(01:19:03):
that's where ACFOR is taking us, Because if there really
are others out there, the gold rush doesn't just open
new frontiers, but new rivals, then the next question is,
of course chilling but irresistible. What could we possibly trade
with them? So here we are at that stargate, ready

(01:19:29):
to step in through the portal We spent many minutes
talking about rocks, resources and the fever of speculation. But
if this takes us far enough into the stars, we
may not be alone in that market, and that that
really changes the game. Even here on the little idy

(01:19:51):
bitty blue ball called Earth, frontiers are rarely empty. So
what could we offer? The first and most obvious expert
isn't gold or platinum or nickel that humans, believe it

(01:20:13):
or not. Biology is most likely Earth's crown jewel. The
sheer range of life here is staggering bacteria that digest arsenic,
plants that turn sunlight into sugar, Whales that navigate oceans
with low frequency symphonies, humans who can build microchips and
play Beethoven on a violin. Now, to all of us
it's familiar. To someone who evolved under another sun, it

(01:20:37):
might be exotic beyond imagining. Our DNA is a library,
a billionaire record of evolutionary trial and error. For us,
it's just inheritance. For others, it could be currency, And
whether you want to face it or not, that's not

(01:20:59):
science fiction. That pattern recognition. Humans have always traded the
living Horses, dogs, sheep, and crops were once regional oddities.
Through trade, they became global staples in the galactic market.
What if a cow maybe, what if they're it's more
valuable than cobalt? What if microbes are worth more than manganese?

(01:21:26):
You don't sell the seed corn. Stewardship means protecting the
foundation of life. Trade away too much of it, and
you may realize too late that you've bartered your grandchildren's
inheritance or what are essentially tiny brinkets. But maybe, just

(01:21:46):
maybe biology isn't the only thing aliens would want, or
the most important thing they want. Maybe what they would
really crave is really it makes humans human. Culture. Rocks
are common, Art is not. We really don't know if

(01:22:06):
the galaxy has Bach or Shakespeare Coltrane. God, can you
imagine we're the only one on the higher universe hads Coltrane.
We don't know if anyone else can, even, you know,
write a poem. We know the volgans can't. What if
they can't paint? But if they can't write a beautiful

(01:22:27):
story that makes strangers weave. If they can't, our art
might be the rarest export of all. Imagine a civilization
is so old it's forgotten, surprise. Imagine a people who
have seen stars die in Galaxy's Clyde, who have never
heard a symphony or read a story of lovers who
choose each other over empires to them that creativity could

(01:22:51):
be priceless. And yes, already I'm including memes in that,
you could be a very treadable commodity. I mean, let's
face it, a silly picture with clever caption might be
meaningless to us in fifty years, but to someone who's
never seen humor expressed that way, it could be intoxicating.

(01:23:13):
At its core. The Silk Road didn't just carry spices.
It carried ideas. Buddhism spread across Asia because of merchants,
not missionaries. Alphabets and myth traveled alongside silk and salt.
Trade has always carried culture and cultural changes everything, and

(01:23:35):
whether or not you want to admit it, culture is
not just an next sport. It's our soul. We have
to wonder if we trade it. We must guard against
letting it be cheapened or twisted, because once given, ideas
cannot be recalled. Now talked about what we have to offer,

(01:23:56):
what what might we want? What would be be willing
to buy? Easy? One is energy fusion that works antimatter
bottled like propane, dice and swarm collectors that make scarcity
a relic of the past that's worth almost any price
when you really look at it. Of course, then you

(01:24:18):
have maybe medicine, maybe cures for all known ills of mankind.
Maybe there's a star copy gits somewhere that magically repairs
the human body. I know that's two stargate references so far.
A therapy that repairs the ravages of age, something that

(01:24:40):
restores sites, sound, and strength. Of course, we'll want knowledge,
libraries of civilization that rosen fell long before we learned
how to walk, maps of the galaxies, physics. We haven't
dreamed of a window into the deepest troops of the universe.
But there's a danger in that too. When you want
something too much much, you will end up paying any price,

(01:25:03):
and the weaker partner never gets a fair deal, because,
let's face it is to reprove this as well, King
China paid with sovereignty. In the nineteenth century, Africa was
carved up in boardrooms thousands of miles away. The Aztecs

(01:25:23):
and incatrated gold for steel, but the exchange was always unequal.
The powerful set the terms, the desperate sign them. What
could possibly make us think the galactic market will be
any kinder? So what might aliens ask of us? Not

(01:25:45):
just cows and gun chattoes? Maybe something stranger. Maybe they
want our time, not our hours, but our life spans.
If they live for millennia, our rapid generational cycles could
act fascinate them. I mean to think every eighty years,

(01:26:05):
a new wave of human thought, new art, new politics,
new inventions to them, where fireworks brief, brilliant, and endlessly renewing,
renewing that alone could be a commodity. Maybe they want
our conflict. I know it sounds dark, but that galaxy

(01:26:25):
may not be peaceful. If you wanted mercenaries, would you
hire the species that industrialized war, that can mobilize millions
with bureaucratic precision. Our capacity for organized violence is amazing
and terrifying, and it could be valuable. The galactic market
may not want our peace, It may want our soldiers.

(01:26:47):
They might want our at tension. If you will think
of Rome and its circuses, think of a modern entertainment
Whole empires run on spectacle. What if the galaxy is tired, decadent,
and board What if they crave is raw novelty of
our arts. Our games are chaos. Humanity has the ultimate

(01:27:10):
reality show, Earth as that entertainment channel for civilizations have
forgot how to laugh. Of course, they might just want
our data, our genomes, our weather, our social graphs, knowledge
of a living planet that may not even be in
its prime yet to us, it's numbers. To them, it

(01:27:32):
could be strategy. A map is never just a map.
There's often a weapon in waiting. But there's a hammer
to this. Not every deal is worth making. History is
littered with bargains that ruined nations. Look what the opium
trade did to China. Unequal treaties turned great empires into clients.

(01:27:58):
Ole people's lost their sovereignty because they couldn't say no
to attempting offer. And if you do not think in
the galactic market, the offers will be dazzling. The technology,
the medicine, the energy, all there for a price. But
if the price is our essence, our biology, our culture,

(01:28:18):
our sovereigntry, and we should consider that trade poison. And
once again this comes back to why discipline will matter.
That's why sovereigntry will matter. Markets often reward the party
that can walk away, because if we can't walk away.
Then we're not trading, we're begging. The first neighbors won't

(01:28:47):
be across the galaxy either, they'll be close. Statistically speaking,
it's most likely to be the star system near us.
Oh I don't know, say Proxima Centauri, Alpha Centauri. If
there's life there, win wink nudge does, if there's a
civilization there, then the first trade won't be at some

(01:29:08):
distance start. It will actually be what is a galactic neighbor?
And the question won't be what do we want? It'll
be what do we risk by showing up too early,
too eager, and too desperate? Because if they've been mining
longer they have, trading longer they have, and building longer

(01:29:29):
they have, then we're not pioneers. Where rookies walking into
someone else's market. And that's the chilling truth. The exoplanet
gold rush may not just tempt us with abundance. It
may tempt us with dependency as well. And dependency is
just a prelude of subjugation, because a strong doesn't just

(01:29:52):
outtrade the week they bind them. They make them need,
and when you need too much, you can't say no,
And this becomes the devil's bargain because unequal trades aren't accidents.
The strategies. Once again, history full of agreements that were
never agreements at all. Only the strong setting terms a

(01:30:12):
week couldn't refuse. Nineteenth century China, European powers opened the
market not with handshakes, but with gunboats. Opium was the bit,
addiction the leash, and treaties the proper or the paper chains.
China of course got to keep its name, but it
lost to sovereignty. The price wasn't gold, it was control.

(01:30:36):
China doesn't convince you. How about Africa. In eighteen eighty four,
European powers gathered in Berlin to divide an entire continent.
Not a single African voice was at the table. Contracts, concessions,
spears of influence, all carved up on maps thousands of
miles away. The resource wealth was immense. The bargain was,
of course a poison. And we can look here at America.

(01:31:03):
Indigenous people sign treaties promising peace and trade, only to
see their promises broken. Whether they became you know, inconvenient
or whatnot. These deals were always tilted, always temporary, and
always designed to benefit one side at the expense of
the other. This is the shape of the devil's bargain,

(01:31:23):
a deal that looks like prosperity, but the livers servitude.
So now let's extrapulate that pattern at the galactic market.
Aliens arrive with wonders. We can barely even comprehend. Medicines
that erase disease, energy that banishes scarcity, technology that binds

(01:31:44):
our understanding of physics. And then, of course we'll offer
it to us at a price, probably not money, probably
not platinum, probably something way deeper. Oh yeah, Share your
DNA libraries, open your ecosystems, give us labor, give us soldiers,

(01:32:05):
give us your loyalty. Of course it will sound fair,
it will even sound generous, But it won't be a partnership.
It'll be a contract written by the powerful, when forced
by dependency, sealed by our own desperation. Once again, the
devil's bargain. It promises salvation, but it costs your soul.

(01:32:30):
Not every miracle is worth the price tag. Yes, a
cure for every cancer is priceless. Yes, endless energy would
change civilizations overnight. Yes, technology that opens the stars would
fulfill our oldest dreams. But if the price is sovereigntry,

(01:32:51):
it's too high. If the price is dependents, it's too high.
If the price is humanity, it's too high, too high,
too high, too high, Because dependency won't arrive with a bang.

(01:33:12):
It will always arrive as a convenience. Don't believe me.
Think of smartphones, the marvel of technology, and yet entire
societies now depend on them for commerce, communication, even a
large segment their identity. Shut down the networks and the

(01:33:33):
world will grind to a halt. Is smartphones a tool
or is it just a leash? Now? Imagine the leash
held by someone who isn't human. Imagine alien grid, energy
grids powering entire cities, alien medicines keeping our populations alive.
The first few years would feel like an absolute, amazing utopia,

(01:33:58):
whether you believe it or not. A long game would
feel like chains, because when your survival depends on someone
else's technology, you no longer unitate negotiate, you obey. Room
didn't conquer every land by legions alone. It conquered with roads, aqueducts,
and coin, each infrastructure that made provinces dependent on the

(01:34:21):
system that was Room. The Empire's genius wasn't just war,
It was integration. Once you drank room and water. Once
you paid room and coin, once you traveled room and roads,
you were Roman, whether you liked it or not. The
Devil's bargain in space would look exactly the same. Trade

(01:34:46):
that feels like progress becomes dependency, Dependency becomes control, and
control always leads the servitude progress, dependency, servitude. Now, let's
be real. Imagine explaining to your grandkids that Earth lost
its independence because somebody swapped our DNA for free alien

(01:35:07):
Wi Fi. I mean, it's not just a bad deal.
That's like the galactic version of opponing someone's grandma's you know,
wedding ring to pay for your Netflix subscription. But again,
this isn't speculation, it's a pattern. Empires never trade fairly
with the weak. They trade with a strategy, and unless

(01:35:32):
humanity goes into the galactic market with discipline, humanity will
be the weak ones. So as we walk away from
this part of the story, remember the shape of the
Devil's bargain. It doesn't come with the horns and a pitchfork.
It'll come with a smile and a contract. It comes

(01:35:53):
with miracles offered at impossible discounts. It comes with promises
of wealth and security, and then it will bind you.
And that is the risk of the exoplanet gold rush,
not just bubbles, not just abundance, not just ownership, but

(01:36:15):
the bargains that looks like salvation and deliver servitude. And
that's the last test, because if we can't resist that bargain,
then all the treaties, all the markets, and all the
rockets won't save us. The rush will test our wealth,
it'll test our will, and it will definitely test our soul.

(01:36:36):
We walk through fever and frenzy, through speculation and scarcity,
through cheaties and loopholes, and finally through the marketplace of
the cosmos itself. And if there's one lesson that repeats
in every corner of the story, its frontiers don't just
technical test technology, They more often than not test character.

(01:36:57):
We will be tempted with abundance, speculation, and will blind
us in power, will absolutely corrupt us. Those are just
simple patterns, and the exoplanet gold Rush is not an exception.
It'll be an amplification of every temptation humanity as possibly
ever based history has whispered these warnings forever Spain and

(01:37:21):
the Silver California and the gold China through trade treaties Africa,
with the maps drawn far off capitals could mean peace.
They were all wrong. The rush always promised wealth, the
rush always cost more than it gave, and the rush
always tends to leave ruin in its wake. And this

(01:37:44):
is the test that is awaiting in the stars. Not
whether we can mine them, oh, we can no doubt
about that. Not whether we can build the rockets or
the contracts, oh we can definitely do that too, But
whether we can mine with discipline, with restraint, and without
surrendering the very things that make humans human. Because wealth

(01:38:06):
without order is chaos, trade without sovereignty is servitude, and
progress without restraint is ruin. And that is the hammer,
that is the warning, that is really the choice we're
left with. Yes, the exoplanet gold rush is inevitable, but
without its outcome may not be. We don't need to

(01:38:28):
rush blindly, we don't need to let greed and speculation lead.
We do will repeat every mistake that's been carved into
history as ruins that we should be paying attention to.
But if we somehow find the way to lead with wisdom,
we remember stewardship, sovereigntry, and discipline, then maybe, just maybe

(01:38:50):
affinity doesn't have to destroy us. It can absolutely elevate us,
and it will come. All that test will definitely come,
and when it does, the question will not be what
can we mind? It will be what will we refuse
to sell? And that brings us to the end of

(01:39:13):
episode sixty nine. From Fever to treaties, from orbital Wall
Street to the Devil's Bargain, we've seen how the rush
isn't just about rocks in the void. It's about really
who you are, who we are, and who we might become,
but more importantly, who we dare not to become. Now,

(01:39:39):
if tonight felt a little heavy, that left you maybe
a little unsettled, good, that was my plan. That's what
these stories are supposed to do. They're not comfort food.
They're reminders. History doesn't repeat or just repeat. It often
rhyme in different language, and unless we learn it rhymes

(01:40:04):
louder and louder every single time, only with newer technology. Now,
as for the next time, we're heading into territory that
will make Tonight's speculation, might make it look a little tame,
Maybe not, because if this episode asked, what if one

(01:40:24):
day we trade with aliens becomes the next one, what
if we already did. That's right, ITC episode seventy. Project Circle,
a secret human alien exchange program. Half rim or, half conspiracy,
half xpile. I know that makes three halves. It's a

(01:40:48):
new math. Until then, please, for the love of all,
guard your sovereigntry, measure your bargains, and remember not all treasure.
It's worth the price.