Potential.

There is no way everything required for one billion US banker bucks to be delivered fits on an SD card. Totally possible for a billion dollar value string (bitcoin key) to fit on a tiny fraction of any card. And that is all you need. Ok, maybe you need the transaction prepping software, but that is small also and rather ubiquitous even now.

Question Fail !

How are the results to be interpreted when worst and best are in the same bucket ?

If I had all of the plutonium, properly packaged, I could demand all of your btc and slaves!

If someone got all of the water first, well, yeah.

If one had all of the human slaves in the world we'd just call them Apple.


edit

come to think of it wouldn't the most valuable things have the ultimate impact on life?  water...nukes...etc.

I think 'DNA' should be added to this poll.

As soon as we start mining on asteroids?
165,000 tons of gold has been mined already... what makes you think that we could bring back enough from asteroids to make a significant increase in that number?  The payload on rockets is in the range of tens or hundreds of tons.  Even the largest airplanes can only take on 100-200 tons - I can only imagine how limited the payload would be on a private spacecraft of some sort.

Sorry, I just don't see asteroid mining as making gold non-scarce.

Asteroid mining is very feasible. You don't need to to load it into a ship, you only need to get it to the moon and start processing it there. Just strap a rocket on a chunk of roid that has rich veins and aim it at the moon. Then you can use disposable re-entry vehicles to get the refined minerals to Earth.

potential value density...... the fuck. Well - an IOU could cover all of those and more, and there's potential for a fellow to honor his commitments even when doing so results in his death, so if we're going only for potential - that seems to be the obvious choice. Lowest potential? Plutonium or gold, I guess. Plutonium could be worth a lot, but certainly never more than food and water, except in cases where priorities are totally fucked, which is a proven possibility -- I guess plutonium can be thrown out, leaving gold, which is the only true luxury resource listed (ETA: that's not true, I guess - and, you know... maybe God would cut you a deal where if you bring him 6oz of gold, he'll give you his powers) -- but I could think of absurd scenarios where it's the only electricity-conducting element/alloy left, and you need to connect two devices together to save Earth or something... A human slave could be extremely valuable, since we're going for potential -- could be anybody...

I guess since we can make our own... worst would be... Idunno.... small quantities of dolomite. Best... being God?

You want to be God or use God for storing value? I'm not sure if you are serious about that. Actually, I chose things that have actually been historically considered highly negotiable. I almost considered obsidian, because it is somewhat scarce and I think it may one day again become highly sought, this time for scientific uses. But that's just my whimsy.

BTW, absurd scenarios are always worth considering if they have historical significance.

I forget which book it was, but Michael Crichton once wrote that the highest value density item was bioengineered medical drugs, which could have incredibly high value for just a number of cells.

Ah yes, Godly powers. Are you talking about divinity or religion? Are we talking about trading relics or actually throwing lightning bolts? I know we can smite pretty much anything with plutonium nowadays.

Looks like we have the son of Cronus himself in out forum.