I remember the excitement when it was discovered that the object was mostly metal, some 230x35x35 meters tall and rotating. That immediately gave rise to speculations that it might be a space ship. However, nothing was heard when we started listening to it, it passed the Sun at only 0.25 AU and it unfortunately did not stop at Earth along the way to say hello...

Indeed a lot of interesting and precious things can be found and mined. However, the challenge is to do that mining a bit better than we do on Earth. For example, asteroid 16 Psyche is mostly iron and nickel, so it's far more efficient to do on-site processing (mining on the asteroid itself). To get the platinum and other precious metals out, solvents are needed. On earth those create massive pollution and contamination. In space, virtually nobody is watching. Technically it is possible, though, to do real and proper checking of local processes. With Blockchain technology, for example, non-repudiation can be added on monitoring. We, Asgardia, should insist on that kind of checking, to prevent Space becoming the next domain where humans destroy beautiful things just to make profit. (maybe this discussion could be made broader, e.g. via https://asgardia.space/en/social/communities/258 ; see also https://asgardia.space/en/news/Solar-System-Needs-Protection-from-the-Gold-Rush-of-Asteroid-Miners )