Latest / The Mind of a Man / 10 Things Worth Billions That Nobody Can Sell
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Imagine finding a $ 20 billion shipwreck, or an asteroid packed
- 0:04Speaker 1: with enough gold to break the global economy, but you
- 0:08Speaker 1: are legally banned from cashing out. From top-secret government vaults
- 0:12Speaker 1: to the deep sea, there are massive fortunes completely trapped
- 0:16Speaker 1: behind red tape. I'm Mike with List25, and these are
- 0:20Speaker 1: 10 things worth billions that absolutely nobody can sell. 10.
- 0:25Speaker 1: The Green Bay Packers The NFL is a billionaire's playground.
- 0:31Speaker 1: I mean, just look at the Denver Broncos. They were
- 0:34Speaker 1: recently bought by the Walmart heirs for $ 4. 6 billion. But
- 0:38Speaker 1: the Green Bay Packers, a franchise valued by Forbes at
- 0:41Speaker 1: roughly $ 6. 6 billion, aren't owned by a tech mogul or
- 0:45Speaker 1: an oil baron. They're owned by about half a million
- 0:49Speaker 1: regular people. Plumbers, teachers, and a guy named Dave in Wisconsin.
- 0:55Speaker 1: But if you're wondering which of those fans can cash
- 0:57Speaker 1: out and sell the team... Well, the answer is absolutely
- 1:00Speaker 1: no one. To understand why, we've got to go back
- 1:04Speaker 1: in time to 1923. The Packers were completely broke. To
- 1:10Speaker 1: save the franchise, team founder Curly Lambeau and local businessmen
- 1:14Speaker 1: turned the team into a non-profit corporation and basically went
- 1:17Speaker 1: door-to-door begging locals to buy shares to keep the lights on.
- 1:22Speaker 1: It actually worked. Over the decades, they've held six separate
- 1:26Speaker 1: stock offerings to fund stadium upgrades. with the most recent
- 1:29Speaker 1: one selling shares for about $ 300 a pop. But here's
- 1:34Speaker 1: the catch. When you buy a normal stock, you get
- 1:37Speaker 1: a slice of the company's profits, and you can sell
- 1:39Speaker 1: it later on Wall Street. Packers stock is financially worthless.
- 1:45Speaker 1: You don't get a cut of the massive multi-billion dollar
- 1:48Speaker 1: TV deals. You don't get ticket revenue. You don't get dividends.
- 1:52Speaker 1: You can't trade it, and you definitely can't sell it
- 1:55Speaker 1: to a hedge fund if the team misses the playoffs.
- 1:58Speaker 1: It's essentially a $ 300 piece of paper that gets you
- 2:01Speaker 1: an invite to an annual shareholder meeting and the right
- 2:04Speaker 1: to buy exclusive merch. It's basically the world's most expensive
- 2:08Speaker 1: sports souvenir. They even have a massive poison pill built
- 2:13Speaker 1: into the rules to prevent a hostile takeover. No single
- 2:17Speaker 1: person is allowed to own more than 200,000 shares. Even
- 2:21Speaker 1: if the richest person on earth wanted to buy the team,
- 2:24Speaker 1: the bylaws physically prevent them from accumulating enough stock to
- 2:28Speaker 1: take control. And if the team were ever dissolved, the
- 2:32Speaker 1: rules state that every single dollar from the sale must
- 2:36Speaker 1: be donated to a local charitable trust. The NFL actually
- 2:40Speaker 1: outlawed this kind of corporate ownership decades ago, but the
- 2:44Speaker 1: Packers were grandfathered in. They are a multi-billion dollar anomaly
- 2:48Speaker 1: that It's completely immune to being bought, sold, or traded.
- 2:54Speaker 1: With that being said, go Bucks. The better bae. 9.
- 3:00Speaker 1: The Fort Knox Gold Deep inside the United States Bullion
- 3:05Speaker 1: Depository at Fort Knox in Kentucky sits one of the
- 3:08Speaker 1: most famous security installations on Earth. Behind a 22-ton blast door,
- 3:14Speaker 1: the vault holds roughly 4,500 metric tons of pure gold.
- 3:18Speaker 1: To put that into perspective, that's about 147 million troy
- 3:22Speaker 1: ounces of solid gold bars. If you take that hoard
- 3:26Speaker 1: and price it at today's open market rates, you're looking
- 3:29Speaker 1: at hundreds of billions of dollars. But if you look
- 3:33Speaker 1: at the official United States government balance sheet, the Treasury
- 3:36Speaker 1: values that entire hoard at measly $ 6. 2 billion. That's because
- 3:41Speaker 1: the government legally values its monetary gold at a statutory
- 3:44Speaker 1: rate of just $ 42. 22, That price was frozen in time
- 3:51Speaker 1: back in 1973, which means the government is essentially using
- 3:55Speaker 1: boomer math to value a national treasure. They do this
- 3:59Speaker 1: because Fort Knox isn't a commercial pawn shop. It was
- 4:02Speaker 1: built in 1936 after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive
- 4:07Speaker 1: Order 6102, which literally forced American citizens to hand over
- 4:11Speaker 1: their privately held gold to the Federal Reserve. The government
- 4:14Speaker 1: then shipped that massive wealth inland, away from vulnerable coastal cities,
- 4:19Speaker 1: out of sheer paranoia that the coasts might get attacked
- 4:21Speaker 1: during World War II. Today, the vault is protected by
- 4:25Speaker 1: layers of minefields, biometric scanners, and a split combination system
- 4:29Speaker 1: where no single person alive knows the entire code. Also,
- 4:34Speaker 1: it's protected by a very short man with a hat
- 4:36Speaker 1: with a blade on it. No, wait, he was trying
- 4:39Speaker 1: to break into it. Eh, you know what I mean.
- 4:42Speaker 1: But the real reason this fortune can never hit the
- 4:44Speaker 1: market is geopolitical. Selling off a massive portion of the
- 4:48Speaker 1: United States gold reserves would send absolute shockwaves through the
- 4:51Speaker 1: global financial markets. It would trigger instant panic about the
- 4:55Speaker 1: stability of the U.S. dollar and permanently weaken American economic leverage.
- 5:00Speaker 1: It's a massive mountain of physical wealth that only serves
- 5:03Speaker 1: its purpose if it stays locked in a dark room
- 5:06Speaker 1: where nobody can touch it. Except Oddjob. 8. The International
- 5:13Speaker 1: Space Station Flying roughly 400 kilometers above our heads at 28,000
- 5:19Speaker 1: kilometers per hour is the International Space Station, or the ISS.
- 5:25Speaker 1: Between the initial construction, the endless rocket launches, and over
- 5:28Speaker 1: two decades of constant operation, estimates put the total price
- 5:32Speaker 1: tag of the station at roughly $ 150 billion. That makes
- 5:38Speaker 1: it easily one of the single most expensive objects ever
- 5:41Speaker 1: constructed in human history. Yet despite being worth a literal
- 5:45Speaker 1: king's ransom, it's totally impossible to sell. You could have
- 5:49Speaker 1: a trillion dollars in your bank account and you still
- 5:52Speaker 1: couldn't buy it. Yeah, not with that attitude. The entire
- 5:56Speaker 1: station is governed by the 1998 Intergovernmental Agreement, a massive
- 6:01Speaker 1: diplomatic treaty signed by 15 nations across five major space agencies. NASA,
- 6:08Speaker 1: Russia's Roscosmos, Europe's ESA, Japan's JAXA, and the Canadian Space Agency.
- 6:15Speaker 1: Under the legal framework, no single nation owns the ISS
- 6:19Speaker 1: as a whole. Each country retains ownership only over the
- 6:23Speaker 1: specific modules they built. But here's where the engineering makes
- 6:28Speaker 1: a sale completely laughable. The modules are entirely codependent. The
- 6:35Speaker 1: Russian segment provides the thrusters needed to stop the station
- 6:38Speaker 1: from falling out of the sky, while the American segment
- 6:40Speaker 1: provides the massive solar rays that generate electrical power. If
- 6:45Speaker 1: one nation decided to sell its section to a private billionaire,
- 6:49Speaker 1: they couldn't simply detach it. Unhooking a single module would
- 6:53Speaker 1: instantly cut off the electrical grid, sever the shared oxygen lines,
- 6:58Speaker 1: and compromise the life support systems. It'd be like trying
- 7:01Speaker 1: to sell your bedroom in a five-nation frat house. except
- 7:04Speaker 1: your bedroom contains the only oxygen tank for the entire building. Now,
- 7:08Speaker 1: I have to ask, because people get super defensive about
- 7:11Speaker 1: space travel. If you somehow had the money, would you
- 7:15Speaker 1: actually take a trip up there? Or are you perfectly
- 7:19Speaker 1: happy keeping your feet here on Earth? Let me know
- 7:21Speaker 1: down below, because I don't know. I'd consider it. Maybe.
- 7:26Speaker 1: Not anymore. I might have. I'm afraid of heights. This
- 7:30Speaker 1: is hard. Seven. the minerals of the deep ocean. If
- 7:36Speaker 1: you travel 4,000 meters down to the absolute bottom of
- 7:40Speaker 1: the Pacific Ocean, you'll find something incredible. Scattered across millions
- 7:45Speaker 1: of square kilometers of pitch black ocean floor are billions
- 7:48Speaker 1: of strange potato-sized black rocks called polymetallic nodules. These lumps
- 7:55Speaker 1: of rock took millions of years to form, and they're
- 7:58Speaker 1: packed with pure industrial gold, manganese, nickel, copper, and cobalt.
- 8:04Speaker 1: These are the exact rare earth metals that the modern
- 8:07Speaker 1: world desperately needs to build millions of electric car batteries
- 8:11Speaker 1: and smartphones. Resource analysts estimate that the metals sitting on
- 8:18Speaker 1: the deep seabed are worth tens of trillions of dollars,
- 8:22Speaker 1: easily eclipsing all known land reserves combined. But you cannot
- 8:27Speaker 1: simply sail a mining ship out into the ocean and
- 8:30Speaker 1: claim them. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law
- 8:34Speaker 1: of the Sea, international waters are officially designated as the
- 8:38Speaker 1: common heritage of humankind. No corporation, nation, or billionaire is
- 8:44Speaker 1: allowed to claim the seabed as private real estate. You
- 8:48Speaker 1: can own the boat, but you cannot own the dirt.
- 8:52Speaker 1: It's basically like finding a briefcase full of cash sitting
- 8:55Speaker 1: on the ocean floor, but the second you try to
- 8:56Speaker 1: take it, the UN sends you a strongly worded cease
- 8:59Speaker 1: and desist letter. A company could spend hundreds of millions
- 9:03Speaker 1: of dollars building advanced robotic collection vehicles, but they're only
- 9:07Speaker 1: granted temporary exploration permits, not outright ownership. Environmental scientists have
- 9:13Speaker 1: strongly pushed back against extraction, pointing out that dragging heavy
- 9:18Speaker 1: vacuum machines across the seabed could kick up massive underwater
- 9:21Speaker 1: sediment plumes and permanently wipe out species that have never
- 9:26Speaker 1: even been cataloged by science. It creates... A massive ethical
- 9:31Speaker 1: standoff between funding our green energy transition and completely destroying
- 9:37Speaker 1: an ancient ecosystem to do it. 6. Your Natural Genes
- 9:43Speaker 1: Imagine waking up tomorrow and getting a bill from a
- 9:45Speaker 1: pharmaceutical company because you are illegally using their DNA. It
- 9:50Speaker 1: sounds like a dystopian sci-fi movie, but it was actually
- 9:54Speaker 1: a harsh legal reality in the U.S. for nearly two decades.
- 9:58Speaker 1: In the 1990s, a biotech company called Myriad Genetics successfully
- 10:03Speaker 1: identified and mapped the precise locations of two vital human genes,
- 10:09Speaker 1: BRCA1 and BRCA2. Certain mutations in these specific genes drastically
- 10:16Speaker 1: increase a person's lifetime risk, of developing breast and ovarian cancer.
- 10:21Speaker 1: As soon as Myriad isolated the genetic sequences, they applied for,
- 10:26Speaker 1: and were granted, patents on the natural genes themselves. That
- 10:31Speaker 1: gave them a complete, ruthless commercial monopoly. If a doctor
- 10:36Speaker 1: wanted to test a high-risk patient to see if they
- 10:39Speaker 1: carried a lethal genetic mutation, well, they were legally barred
- 10:43Speaker 1: from using their own hospital laboratory... or developing a cheaper test.
- 10:49Speaker 1: Every single test in the country had to be sent
- 10:52Speaker 1: directly to Myriad, who charged upwards of $ 4, 000 per screening.
- 10:59Speaker 1: They essentially claimed private ownership over a piece of human
- 11:02Speaker 1: code that is sitting inside millions of people right now.
- 11:06Speaker 1: Patients and researchers eventually fought back, and the insane legal
- 11:10Speaker 1: battle went all the way to the United States Supreme
- 11:12Speaker 1: Court in 2013. Thankfully, the judges unanimously ruled that naturally
- 11:18Speaker 1: occurring DNA is a product of nature, not a patentable
- 11:23Speaker 1: corporate invention, simply because some scientists found it first. The
- 11:28Speaker 1: justices drew a firm line. Scientists can patent synthetic complementary
- 11:33Speaker 1: DNA that they engineer from scratch in a test tube,
- 11:36Speaker 1: but they can never claim private property rights over the
- 11:39Speaker 1: biological code you were born with. Your genome contains biological
- 11:44Speaker 1: information that fuels a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry, but the
- 11:48Speaker 1: actual code inside your cells remains something no corporation can
- 11:52Speaker 1: ever buy or sell. Ha! Sell. See what I did there? 5.
- 12:00Speaker 1: Antarctica Antarctica is an entire continent buried beneath an average
- 12:04Speaker 1: of 2 kilometers of solid ice. It's also one of
- 12:08Speaker 1: the richest untapped treasure troves on the planet. Geological surveys
- 12:13Speaker 1: have revealed that beneath that frozen crust lie massive unmined
- 12:16Speaker 1: deposits of coal, platinum, copper, and chromium, alongside an estimated
- 12:22Speaker 1: 200 billion barrels of oil trapped in the offshore basins.
- 12:27Speaker 1: If those resources were sitting anywhere else in the world,
- 12:31Speaker 1: energy companies would be spending hundreds of billions of dollars
- 12:34Speaker 1: to build drilling platforms. But in Antarctica, that entire fortune
- 12:39Speaker 1: is legally off-limits. In 1959, during the height of the
- 12:44Speaker 1: Cold War, 12 nations came together to sign the historic
- 12:48Speaker 1: Antarctic Treaty. The treaty took all historical territorial claims made
- 12:53Speaker 1: by countries like Britain, Chile, Argentina, and Australia and froze
- 12:56Speaker 1: them in place. Under the agreement, the entire continent is
- 13:00Speaker 1: officially designated as a scientific preserve dedicated strictly to peace
- 13:06Speaker 1: and global research. In 1991... the treaty was strengthened by
- 13:10Speaker 1: the Madrid Protocol, which placed an indefinite ban on all
- 13:14Speaker 1: commercial mineral exploration and oil drilling. A common internet rumor
- 13:19Speaker 1: claims that this mining ban automatically expires in 2048, but
- 13:25Speaker 1: it doesn't. That is just the first year any participating
- 13:29Speaker 1: nation can officially request a review conference. Even if a
- 13:33Speaker 1: nation tried to push for mining... Changing the rules will
- 13:36Speaker 1: require an extraordinary international consensus that's almost impossible to achieve.
- 13:42Speaker 1: Beyond the legal walls, Antarctica is essentially the master climate
- 13:45Speaker 1: regulator for our entire planet. It drives global ocean currents,
- 13:50Speaker 1: regulates atmospheric weather systems, and holds roughly 70% of the
- 13:53Speaker 1: world's fresh water. Liquidating its natural resources would mean building
- 14:00Speaker 1: massive industrial operations in sub-zero winds, all while risking a
- 14:04Speaker 1: catastrophic meltdown that would turn half the world's coastal cities
- 14:08Speaker 1: into aquariums. And as someone who lives in Tampa, one
- 14:12Speaker 1: of those coastal cities, I don't want that. I'm already
- 14:17Speaker 1: close enough to the water as is. It's right over there. 4.
- 14:22Speaker 1: The Great Barrier Reef How exactly do you calculate the
- 14:26Speaker 1: cash value of a living natural wonder? You can't just
- 14:29Speaker 1: throw a Zillow listing up for a billion fish. Stretching
- 14:32Speaker 1: over 2,300 kilometers along the northeastern coast of Australia, the
- 14:37Speaker 1: Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth.
- 14:42Speaker 1: It's so massive that it can easily be seen from space,
- 14:46Speaker 1: comprising nearly 3,000 individual reef systems and hundreds of tropical islands.
- 14:51Speaker 1: In 2017, the financial firm Deloitte Access Economics conducted a
- 14:56Speaker 1: massive study to figure out what the reef was actually
- 14:59Speaker 1: worth in cold, hard cash. They calculated its direct economic
- 15:03Speaker 1: contribution through global tourism, the tens of thousands of local
- 15:07Speaker 1: jobs it supports, and commercial fishing, landing at an estimated
- 15:11Speaker 1: valuation of roughly $ 56 billion Australian dollars, or about $ 42
- 15:17Speaker 1: billion US dollars, or otherwise $ 42. 56 billion Australian dollary dues.
- 15:23Speaker 1: A follow-up assessment by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation updated
- 15:26Speaker 1: that figure to roughly 95 billion Australian dollars. But more
- 15:31Speaker 1: than a third of that calculated value didn't come from
- 15:33Speaker 1: cash transactions or boat tickets. It came from what economists
- 15:38Speaker 1: call brand and existence value. That's the measurable economic worth
- 15:43Speaker 1: that people around the world place on simply knowing the
- 15:45Speaker 1: reef exists, even if they never plan to put on
- 15:48Speaker 1: a snorkel and visit it in person. The reef also
- 15:51Speaker 1: serves as a critical coastal storm barrier, absorbing the impact
- 15:55Speaker 1: of massive ocean waves and saving coastal communities billions of
- 15:58Speaker 1: dollars in infrastructure damage every single year. But that multi-billion
- 16:04Speaker 1: dollar price tag is not a real estate listing. You
- 16:09Speaker 1: cannot walk up to the Australian government with a blank
- 16:11Speaker 1: check and purchase a section of the coral. The valuation
- 16:15Speaker 1: is really just an economic warning sign. It's a desperate
- 16:19Speaker 1: way to show politicians exactly how much financial devastation would
- 16:24Speaker 1: hit the region if climate change and pollution end up
- 16:27Speaker 1: killing the coral. It's a lot of dollar reduce. No,
- 16:32Speaker 1: but seriously, let's save the coral reef. Please. Three, the
- 16:38Speaker 1: United States nuclear arsenal. The U.S. currently maintains a stockpile
- 16:43Speaker 1: of approximately 3,700 active and reserve nuclear nuclear warheads. Managing, securing,
- 16:51Speaker 1: and modernizing this apocalyptic arsenal is one of the most
- 16:55Speaker 1: expensive undertakings in the history of government spending. The nuclear
- 16:59Speaker 1: enterprise is an enormous military network that includes high-security research laboratories,
- 17:05Speaker 1: underground missile silos, a fleet of stealth submarines, and long-range
- 17:09Speaker 1: strategic bombers. According to nonpartisan estimates, the U.S. is projected
- 17:15Speaker 1: to spend roughly $ 1. 2 trillion over a 30-year window just
- 17:20Speaker 1: to maintain these weapons systems. But this inventory operates on
- 17:25Speaker 1: the most bizarre financial paradox in human history. The government
- 17:29Speaker 1: spends trillions of dollars manufacturing and preserving a high-tech asset
- 17:35Speaker 1: that it actively prays it will never ever ever under
- 17:39Speaker 1: any circumstances have to actually use. It's essentially the world's
- 17:43Speaker 1: most terrifying, expensive fire extinguisher. And obviously they can never
- 17:48Speaker 1: legally sell a single warhead to recoup the investment under
- 17:51Speaker 1: the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Transferring an active nuclear weapon
- 17:56Speaker 1: to another nation is strictly illegal and would instantly trigger
- 18:00Speaker 1: a global meltdown. But even if you set the massive
- 18:04Speaker 1: legal and ethical barriers aside and The technical reality makes
- 18:08Speaker 1: private sale completely unworkable. A nuclear warhead isn't a self-contained
- 18:13Speaker 1: product that you can plug into a different missile system
- 18:16Speaker 1: like a generic car battery. They're protected by complex electrical
- 18:20Speaker 1: safety locks known as permissive action links, which require top-secret
- 18:25Speaker 1: launch authorization codes from the National Command Authority. Furthermore, the
- 18:29Speaker 1: radioactive materials inside the warheads actively degrade over time, and
- 18:33Speaker 1: require continuous, highly technical chemical repurification just to remain functional.
- 18:40Speaker 1: It's a trillion-dollar inventory of unimaginable destructive power whose entire
- 18:45Speaker 1: strategic value lies in the fact that it sits untouched
- 18:49Speaker 1: in high-security vaults and is never brought to market. 2.
- 18:53Speaker 1: The San Jose Shipwreck On June 8, 1708, a massive
- 18:59Speaker 1: 64-gun Spanish galleon named the San Jose was sailing off
- 19:03Speaker 1: the coast of Cartagena, Colombia. The ship was weighed down
- 19:07Speaker 1: with an unbelievable cargo of gold, silver, and raw emeralds
- 19:10Speaker 1: mined from South America. But as it approached the harbor,
- 19:15Speaker 1: it was intercepted by a squadron of British warships. During
- 19:18Speaker 1: a fierce, hours-long naval battle, the San Jose's powder magazines
- 19:23Speaker 1: detonated in a massive explosion. The galleon sank nearly 600
- 19:28Speaker 1: meters into the Caribbean, taking almost 600 crewmembers, and the
- 19:32Speaker 1: richest cargo ever lost at sea, down to the seabed.
- 19:36Speaker 1: For over three centuries, the wreck was the holy grail
- 19:40Speaker 1: of shipwreck hunters. Then, in 2015, the Colombian government officially
- 19:44Speaker 1: announced that an autonomous underwater vehicle had finally located the
- 19:48Speaker 1: pristine wreckage, complete with its distinctive bronze cannons. Marine salvage
- 19:53Speaker 1: experts quickly estimated the current open market value of the
- 19:56Speaker 1: coins and uncut gemstones at anywhere from $ 17 to $ 20 billion.
- 20:02Speaker 1: But that massive fortune has triggered the most expensive international
- 20:05Speaker 1: custody battle in human history. Colombia has declared the shipwreck
- 20:10Speaker 1: a protected piece of natural cultural heritage, legally barring commercial
- 20:14Speaker 1: salvage operators from treating it as a private treasure hunt.
- 20:18Speaker 1: Spain immediately stepped in, arguing under international maritime law that
- 20:24Speaker 1: the San Jose was an official military warship of the
- 20:28Speaker 1: Spanish crown, meaning the vessel and its contents still belonged
- 20:33Speaker 1: to Spain. Meanwhile, a U.S. salvage company called Sea Search
- 20:38Speaker 1: Armada claims they located the coordinates of the wreck back
- 20:41Speaker 1: in the 1980s, demanding a 50% cut of the multi-billion
- 20:45Speaker 1: dollar recovery. While the international courts battle over the legal jurisdiction,
- 20:50Speaker 1: the cargo remains completely protected on the seabed, ensuring that
- 20:53Speaker 1: $ 20 billion in historical treasure remains trapped in the mud.
- 20:58Speaker 1: Be right back. I'm going to go dive in the
- 21:01Speaker 1: Caribbean for an unrelated thing. Just suddenly felt like diving
- 21:06Speaker 1: in the Caribbean. Be right back. One Asteroid 16 Psyche
- 21:14Speaker 1: To find the single most valuable object in our solar system,
- 21:18Speaker 1: you have to look... Sorry. You have to look roughly
- 21:22Speaker 1: 370 million kilometers away in the main asteroid belt between
- 21:26Speaker 1: Mars and Jupiter. That's where you'll find Asteroid 16 Psyche,
- 21:31Speaker 1: a massive world stretching over 200 kilometers across. Unlike most asteroids,
- 21:36Speaker 1: which are made of frozen ice or porous rock, Radar
- 21:39Speaker 1: scans indicate that Psyche is a heavily metallic body. Planetary
- 21:44Speaker 1: scientists believe it's the exposed iron-nickel core of a shattered protoplanet.
- 21:49Speaker 1: When researchers calculated the sheer volume of iron, nickel, and
- 21:52Speaker 1: precious metals like gold and platinum inside the asteroid, the
- 21:56Speaker 1: numbers were staggering. At current market prices, headlines proclaimed that
- 22:02Speaker 1: the raw materials on 16 Psyche are worth an estimated
- 22:05Speaker 1: $ 10 quintillion dollars. That's one followed by 19 zeros. To
- 22:13Speaker 1: put that in perspective, the entire GDP of every nation
- 22:16Speaker 1: on Earth combined is only around $ 110 trillion. That means
- 22:23Speaker 1: this single asteroid is theoretically worth nearly 100,000 times the
- 22:28Speaker 1: entire global economy. It is the ultimate cosmic troll job.
- 22:34Speaker 1: Because even if a futuristic space mining company actually managed
- 22:38Speaker 1: to capture Psyche and drag it into Earth's orbit, basic
- 22:41Speaker 1: supply and demand would instantly take over. The sudden infinite
- 22:45Speaker 1: supply of precious metals would cause the global market price
- 22:48Speaker 1: of gold and iron to completely collapse to near zero.
- 22:52Speaker 1: The very act of selling the asteroid would instantly destroy
- 22:57Speaker 1: the assumptions used to calculate its value. Furthermore, The 1967
- 23:02Speaker 1: Outer Space Treaty strictly prohibits any country from claiming sovereignty
- 23:07Speaker 1: or exclusive ownership over any celestial body in space. Except
- 23:12Speaker 1: that one. That's mine. Dibs. The asteroid's greatest value isn't
- 23:16Speaker 1: a mythical $ 10 quintillion bank account. It's the unique window
- 23:21Speaker 1: it gives us into how metallic planetary cores were forged
- 23:25Speaker 1: billions of years ago. A literal cosmic fortune that would
- 23:29Speaker 1: completely break the global economy. which makes you wonder what
- 23:32Speaker 1: people are actually spending their money on right now. So
- 23:36Speaker 1: check out our video on the 25 most expensive things
- 23:38Speaker 1: in the world right here. As always, I'm Mike Estrin.
- 23:42Speaker 1: Stay curious. I'll see you in the next one. Ignore
- 23:47Speaker 1: the snorkel mask.