An article that mentions the put options scheme: http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/23/planetary-resources-astero...

It says that Diamandis (the founder of Planetary Resources) may have been joking when he made these plans to buy options.

Yep, that's it. But why wouldn't it work? There are orders of magnitude more platinum-group resources out there than there are down here.

Yeah, that's true. Maybe it will work if they keep their plans secretive until right before they are able deliver large amounts of platinum-group elements? They're only going to make a significant amount on these options if very few people buy these options, otherwise a large rush would shift the market prematurely.

I'm sure I wasn't the only one that was curious about this, so:

> There are very limited laws against "insider trading" in the commodities markets, if, for no other reason, than that the concept of an "insider" is not immediately analogous to commodities themselves (e.g., corn, wheat, steel, etc.). However, analogous activities such as front running are illegal under U.S. commodity and futures trading laws. For example, a commodity broker can be charged with fraud if he or she receives a large purchase order from a client (one likely to affect the price of that commodity) and then purchases that commodity before executing the client's order in order to benefit from the anticipated price increase. [edit]