Garrett P. Serviss 
Moon Metal [PDF ebook] 

For thousands of years, human civilization has pegged its currencies and barter systems to stores of precious metals. What would happen if our interstellar explorations uncovered infinite stores of gold, silver, platinum, and more? That’s the thought-provoking premise of The Moon Metal, a tale from Garrett P. Serviss, an astronomer and science-fiction pioneer who blazed trails in both fields in the early twentieth century.