But certainly some monetary easing can generate quite some wealth.
It is very easy to point out how an economy with perfect information and perfect cooperation has zero demand for money, but reality works very differently.
So of course the whole country benefited.
As for some spaniards profiting, of course, it was still feudal, aristocracy profited.
Somehow Europe lost sight of that and the US seems to be on the same path.
Also, gold wasn't used to build things, so it contributes very little to wealth (jewelery and decorations notwithstanding). Having a huge injection of iron or uranium or tritium or helium or lithium or other rare and sought-after elements today would be an entirely different story.
Of course, the whole idea of bringing an asteroid to earth to mine is pure sci-fi at this moment, so this is all moot.
The one thing those asteroids have going for it is that it's already in space - so if you were planning on building a space station, space ship or something of that nature, you might be better off mining in space to produce the materials for it (and save the launch costs, for the one time cost of launching space mining and manufacturing plants).
If I were a betting man, I’d wager SpaceX to be valued more in the long run.
. . . you'd destabilize the world economy, and your trillion-dollar rock would either no longer be a trillion-dollar rock, or else your trillion dollars won't buy nearly as much as it would have before.
I would be willing to bet that SpaceX will be long gone as a company before the first successful (cash-flow positive) asteroid mining operations will begin long in our future. And that it will barely be a memory by the time we start bringing asteroids closer to the earth to mine them, if that ever happens. They will of course have made some serious contributions to this future, but this is waaaaay beyond anything we'll see in our lifetimes, and companies just don't tend to live that long.