Asteroid mining was the extraction of raw materials from asteroids.
In 2370, con artist Alsia claimed that she was taking all the money she had saved and was purchasing the mining concession of the entire Vlugta asteroid belt. According to Martus Mazur, prospecting could be risky. However, Alsia responded that her father was a stellar cartographer who conducted a full spectrum mineral analysis of the asteroids but never had the means to follow up on what he found. Once the survey results become public, Alsia would get seven times her investment back overnight.
Later in Club Martus, Alsia informed Mazur that the Vlugta government accepted her bid but wouldn't finalize the transaction until she commissioned a study of the effects of asteroid mining on intersystem navigation. Since all of her money was committed to the bid, she couldn't afford the 10,000 isik cost of the study and only had a week to get it done. She hoped she could find an investor in time, and Mazur suggested he might know someone, though he was curious about what kind of return they could expect on their investment. Alsia answered that she'd pay back ten times the investment once she began mining.
Using profits from the club, Mazur provided Alsia with just about 10,000 isiks worth of gold-pressed latinum. However, Alsia failed to return later to tell Mazur how the bid went. After a Pythron couple decided to press charges for a previous crime, Mazur was arrested by Constable Odo and would eventually see Alsia again. He mistakenly assumed that she came to get him out of his holding cell but she too had been arrested, for trying to scam Quark with the same story about asteroid mining. (DS9: "Rivals")