Is there even that much money in circulation?
This is someone taking the "if someone's willing to buy an apple for $100 and I have a billion apples, then my apples must be worth $100 billion"-crypto math to space.
What they are saying is that there's not only more iron there than we use in Earth's economy but if we priced this additional iron at current prices that additional iron would be worth more than everything else we do here on this planet economically.
If you want the worth of something you do the integral of the demand curve, not the marginal price times your volume for sale.
This is the point of my apple example; once you’ve sold the first of your billion apples, the next apple you sell will earn you slightly less, until either your supply or the demand curve runs out.
> If the asteroid’s riches are confirmed, it may be worth more than the global economy at $10 quintillion.
But of course that "may be" is carrying a lot of weight. The actual value would be much closer to zero when you think about it for more than a second. The "market price" for these metals would plummet after introducing a massive glut like this.
Example would be textiles in the Industrial Revolution.
For real world examples, look at Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage
(0) https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/mansa-musa-m... (1)