There is a lot of potential here. Just one known asteroid, that NASA has already landed a probe on, called “433 Eros”, which is about 34.5km x 11km x 11km, is believed to have more precious metals in it, especially platinum group metals, than exist in the entire crust of the Earth.
To put that in perspective, on Earth, “platinum ore” has something between 4-6 parts per million of platinum in it. Non-platinum ore, that is, most all other rock, has maybe 1-2 parts per million. It is so rare that typically, the dust on the side of highways is reclaimed, because it has almost as many molecules of platinum group metals, from catalytic converters in cars, as does platinum ore.
At last check, platinum is selling for $1,577/troy ounce. While unusually worth less than gold right now, at $1,642/troy ounce, you can see why mining asteroids to get several tons of each every few months, is becoming far more reasonable.
For me the real interest lies in the technological advances that would naturally grow from industrialized space.
They’re talking about mining near earth asteroids but that would inevitably lead to mining the main asteroid belt which means faster ships. That in turn will lead to looking for minerals and gasses of the Kuiper belt which will require even faster ships. Once you start looking to the Ort cloud, you can reasonably start talking about missions to Alpha Centauri and Barnard’s star.
Few of these things will happen in our lifetimes but it sure would be nice to see mankind actually striving to do something again.