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On the morning Quantum eMotion Corp. (NYSE American: QNC) (TSXV: QNC) began trading on the NYSE American, Darren Cudmore opened the interview without understatement. “Today is a really important day for this company,” he said, noting that the shares of Quantum eMotion Corp. had moved “from the pinks to the QBs to the American Exchange.”The company announced on February 24, 2026, that its shares had begun trading on the NYSE American under the ticker “QNC,” while remaining listed on the TSX Venture Exchange as QNC and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange as 34Q0. The uplisting followed prior approval and, according to the company, marked “a significant advancement” in its strategy to expand its U.S. shareholder base and increase U.S. capital markets exposure. Yorkville Securities, LLC acted as adviser in connection with the listing.Asked about the process, Francis Bellido, President, CEO and Director, compared it to scientific research. “The process is very similar to actually working in deep science, in deep discovery,” he said. “For a long time nothing happens, particularly when you don't have so many resources. You're limited and you have to focus on one or two technologies and make them grow in an environment where having access to funding is extremely difficult at the beginning. Nobody really believes you.”“You really have to be what we call a real entrepreneur,” he continued. “You never say no and you continue until the moment. I'm old enough now to trust more my intuition. When you feel there is something there and your experience tells you it’s just a matter of time — I've seen many groundbreaking technologies that at the beginning nobody wanted to pay attention to, people were laughing at them, and ultimately those technologies transformed the world.”The company’s core technology is its QRNG, or Quantum Random Number Generator. “QRNG is the acronym for the Quantum Random Number Generator,” Dr. Bellido said. In cybersecurity, he explained, “cyber criminals always look for errors that have been made in the architecture of systems used to defend against third parties.” They search for patterns. “Humans love patterns, and even when you choose passwords you tend to repeat mistakes. At every level there is a pattern — that’s what they’re looking for.”“The only way you can defend yourself against patterns is to introduce unpredictability, complete randomness, in your defense architecture,” he said. “The world we live in is not completely random. Everything has a level of determinism. If you want pure randomness, you have to rely on quantum mechanics.”Describing the mechanism, he said: “When you work with quantum particles like photons or electrons, they have a dual nature — they behave both as particles and as waves. In our technology, we create a stream of electrons like a regular current and create a barrier where electrons bounce back. Once in a while, they behave like a wave and tunnel through the barrier. The current after the barrier becomes completely time dependent — completely erratic, and completely random. That becomes the analog source that we then digitize.”Dr. Bellido credited physicist Bertrand Reulet, who will attend the bell-ringing ceremony in New York. “We have an excellent relationship. I call him almost every two weeks, depending on what we need,” he said. “For him, it's a great achievement. Very few professors in physics, particularly quantum physics, see the results of what they've invented during their lifetime.”The company has also formed a relationship with Greybox, whose chief executive, Pierre Bérubé, he said he spoke with the evening before the ceremony. “We have known each other for almost three years. We helped them from the beginning to understand the importance of security.”To read the full column, go to: https://bit.ly/4ciJaZc

Volta Metals Ltd. (CSE: VLTA | FSE: D0W) is a critical mineral exploration company focused on rare earths, gallium, lithium, cesium, and tantalum, with projects in Ontario, Canada. On February 23, 2026, the Company reported a major resource expansion at its Springer Rare Earth Element deposit near Sturgeon Falls, approximately one hour east of Sudbury, Ontario along the Trans-Canada Highway.“It's very exciting. It exceeded our expectations, to be honest,” Kerem Usenmez, President, CEO, and Director of Volta Metals Ltd., said in an interview with InvestorNews host Tracy Hughes.“What's exciting also is that it's still open and we are drilling. We're hitting more. So, I think it's going to get even bigger, but we're already in the Top 10 and getting better and better every day.”Hughes asked what “Top 10” meant in practical terms. “Basically, if I understand properly, is the Springer project in the ‘Top 10 Rare Earth Deposits in North America’? Is that correct?”“That is correct, yes,” Usenmez replied. “It got into a new scale. It really is incredible — 176 million tonnes of rare earth mineralization, on surface. It's very, very exciting.”The updated Mineral Resource Estimate, effective December 31, 2025, reports 56.6 million tonnes in the Indicated category at 0.70% TREO and 119.5 million tonnes in the Inferred category at 0.58% TREO. According to the Company, the deposit now ranks among the top 10 largest rare earth deposits in North America based on publicly available Indicated and Inferred mineral resource tonnage for North American rare earth projects listed in the S&P Global Market Intelligence database, 2025.The Company reported a 1,248% increase in Indicated Resources to 56.6Mt at 0.70% TREO, including a near-surface high-grade core of 11.5Mt at 1.10% TREO, and an 841% expansion in Inferred Resources to 119.5Mt at 0.58% TREO, including a near-surface high-grade core of 3Mt at 1.16% TREO. Additional contained rare earth oxides were added at an estimated discovery cost of C$0.02 per tonne of Indicated Resource.Hughes noted that the project ranks number seven and pointed to infrastructure as a key advantage. Usenmez agreed. “Fifty minutes away from Sudbury through the Trans-Canada Highway. We're just outside of Sturgeon Falls. Have two hydro power dams literally just outside of our claims, and one of them is powered by First Nations.“So this project will be powered not only with staff but literally the power because the power lines go through the property. We have all the supplies we need within 68 km, including Trans-Canada Highway and railway station.”According to the Company’s disclosure, the deposit is approximately 70 km east of Sudbury and 15 km north of Sturgeon Falls. It is accessible via Highway 64, with proximity to the Crystal Falls and Sturgeon Falls hydroelectric dams, hydroelectric power lines, a natural gas pipeline, and the Canadian National Railway line. A high-voltage transmission line runs through the project’s claims and is expected to source power from the Crystal Falls hydroelectric dam.On drilling results, Usenmez said, “Our initial drilling came back with — well, we first drilled twice as much as we anticipated, or planned for, because we were still in mineralization. It kept going, etc. So having holes, not once, more than once, from top to bottom mineralized, and at the end still high-grade mineralization — that's really what else can you hope for?“So that helped, and that showed us the shape is changing. It's getting bigger and it is still open. That's why we are drilling right now. But the intercepts we have are exceptional — rare earth mineralization, very high grade. In some cases, the premium magnets that you want — magnet minerals — but also the gallium. So very, very good results.”Hughes referenced the “core four” rare earth elements — praseodymium, neodymium, dysprosium and terbium — and asked about their significance.

“Drill hole number 15: we hit from surface 300 m, 2.55% rare earths,” Tom Drivas said, describing what he called “very exciting results” from diamond drilling at the Ultra Hard Rock carbonatite target in Goiás, Brazil.Drivas, CEO and Director of Appia Rare Earths & Uranium Corp. (CSE: API | OTCQB: APAAF), said the company drilled 26 holes totaling 7,347.1 metres, with results announced from 12 of them and additional assays pending. “That’s very exciting — very unusual that you drill a hole for 300 m. The hole ended up in mineralization,” he said.He detailed the intercepts: “The last 16 m of the hole has 5.2% total rare earth oxides. From 2 m to 99 m we get 4.42% total rare earth oxide. From 93 m to 99 m, about 6 meters, 13.30%.” The highlight interval, he added, was “about 1.7 m at around 95–97 meters depth for 14.27% total rare earth oxides.” He translated the figure for context: “That basically translates, for people who are not familiar with percentages, 142,700 ppm — parts per million — total rare earth oxides.”Drivas also cited magnet rare earth content within the interval. “In terms of magnet rare earths like neodymium praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium, we’ve got 23,235 parts per million, which is basically 2.3%. So very exciting.”According to the company’s February 24, 2026 news release, preliminary assay results identified significant intervals of Total Rare Earth Oxide (TREO) and Magnet Rare Earth Oxide (MREO), with 13 drill holes still pending. The release states that mineralization is open at depth and reappears to the northeast, and that average uranium and thorium values are 7.46 ppm and 66.48 ppm, respectively.Drivas said the latest program builds on earlier drilling. “We drilled about a year, year and a half ago — we drilled three holes from zero to 150 m depth and all three holes were mineralized. Now with this drilling program, we went down to 300 meters and the system is still open.”He described two styles of mineralization at the project. “We’ve got ionic clay on surface — like the first 10–20 meters — high-grade ionic clay type mineralization. But underneath that is carbonatite rocks — hard rock — and that’s also rich in rare earths.”He emphasized the relevance of carbonatite-hosted rare earth deposits. “Two of the biggest mines outside of China that produce rare earths — Lynas and MP Materials — are rare earth extractable from carbonatite. So it’s basically a similar situation that we have there.”Appia holds a 25% interest in the Ultra Hard Rock and Ultra IAC Projects, totaling 42,932.24 hectares in Goiás. Under a previously announced agreement, Ultra is obligated to acquire Appia’s 25% interest in exchange for a 25% equity interest in Ultra once a prefeasibility study has been prepared for the Ultra IAC project and a mineral resource estimate has been prepared for the Ultra Hard Rock project.“We now drilled 29 holes,” Drivas said. “I think after this the plan would be to put a 43-101 resource on the carbonatite mineralization, and obviously we want to put a resource on the ionic clay, and also do a PFS — a pre-feasibility — on the ionic clay. Our plan is to do all this this year.”Drilling at the ionic clay target is ongoing. “We’ve got two drills. We’re going to bring another two drills in the next couple of weeks and we’re planning to drill between now and June this year,” he said. The plan calls for approximately 952 reverse circulation holes of 15 to 20 metres each, in addition to 300 to 500 auger and exploration holes over the coming months.“In terms of valuation, we feel that Appia is trading at a fraction — maybe 10% — of what comparable other companies in the space are trading,” Drivas said. “Appia is probably the only company that I know that has three unique rare earth projects in Saskatchewan, in Ontario, in Brazil. And in addition to that we have uranium projects in Ontario and Saskatchewan.”To read the full column, go to: https://bit.ly/4kTeaB3

American Tungsten Corp. (CSE: TUNG) (OTCQB: TUNGF) is advancing the historic IMA Mine Project in Idaho toward commercial production, positioning itself to address critical metal scarcity in North America. The company holds an exclusive option to acquire full ownership of the IMA Mine, subject to a 2% royalty, and has expanded its land position with 113 additional federal claims covering nearly 2,000 acres. The IMA Mine is a past-producing underground tungsten operation on private-patented land, historically producing approximately 199,449 MTUs of WO₃ between 1945 and 1957.“About 31 ft at 0.48% tungsten oxide (WO₃) and then you’ve got 1.84 oz/ton silver,” Ali Haji, CEO and director of American Tungsten Corp. (CSE: TUNG) (OTCQB: TUNGF), said in an interview with InvestorNews.com host Tracy Hughes, referring to results released February 10, 2026. He continued: “We’ve got 11 ft grading at 1% and then 2.05 oz/ton silver. 16.3 ft at 0.54% with 1.79 oz/ton silver.”The February 10 news release reported 31 feet grading 0.48% WO₃ and 1.84 oz/t Ag in hole AT25-01; 11.1 feet grading 1.08% WO₃ and 2.05 oz/t Ag in hole AT25-02; and 16.3 feet grading 0.54% WO₃ and 1.79 oz/t Ag in hole AT25-03. The company stated that all initial drillholes intersected significant mineralized quartz veins consistent with projections of the No.5 and No.7 vein systems.Haji said the mineralization reflects the geology of the system. “It’s a moly porphyry with tungsten-silver-rich veins running through it,” he said. “With silver running where it is and the price of molybdenum also climbing, it’s a great sort of position to be.” He added: “Not only do we have some of the highest-grade tungsten, but now we’ve got silver and moly to help offset our opex and hedge us against any decline in pricing for tungsten as well.”On timing, Haji drew a distinction between initial sales and formal production status. “Production—when a mining company says they’re in production—they’ve had two consecutive quarters of production and revenue,” he said. “I have committed to being the first company to have product sale this year.” He added: “Commercial production will occur in 2027, but first product sale will certainly happen this year.”Haji described the IMA Mine as “the fourth largest producer of tungsten up until about the late ’50s,” noting that “over $400 million” has been spent on the property by prior operators through 2010, with more than 57,000 feet drilled historically. “We have done about 6,000 ft on the project. Now we will complete 18,000 ft in our Phase 1 drilling program,” he said. The Phase 1 program includes drilling from multiple underground levels, with additional holes planned.The company’s stated objective is to define a compliant mineral resource. “Our intent is to de-risk via delineating and twinning the existing exploration program to come up with a resource that we believe to be commercially viable,” Haji said. “We’ve got to get it to a 43-101 compliant state.” He said recent channel and rock chip sampling returned higher results than historic sampling conducted between 1979 and 1982. “We’ve got well in excess of 1% tungsten, about 2.79 oz silver,” he said, attributing improved results to advances in assay techniques and technology.In terms of corporate structure, Haji said the company has “about 49 million shares out,” describing the capital structure as “still very, very tight for a junior that has a line of sight on perhaps revenue at the end of this year.” He said the company completed “two financings for a total of $25 million in the last six months with no warrants,” adding, “There is no overhang from any warrants.” According to Haji, approximately 15% of shareholders are institutional, with participation from funds in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Australia and the United States, alongside roughly 7,400 U.S. retail shareholders and a similar number in Canada.

Antimony Resources Corp. (CSE: ATMY) (OTCQB: ATMYF) (FSE: K8J0) is an exploration and development company focused exclusively on antimony. The Company’s management team possesses extensive experience in financing, exploration, development and mining, and is focused on becoming a significant North American producer of antimony.“Antimony is the new tungsten—everybody’s talking about antimony,” Tracy Hughes said in an interview with Jim Atkinson, the company’s CEO and Director, asking why the metal has recently escalated as a top-priority critical mineral.“I think people have started to realize how important it is in so many different aspects—not only on the defense and military side of things, but also as an industrial metal,” Mr. Atkinson said. “Also, people are noticing the fact that the price has shot up from, let’s say, $12,000 a metric ton to almost $60,000 a metric ton. There’s nothing like a price spike to get people interested.”From a defense perspective, he added, “If you don’t have antimony, it really restricts your military in many ways.” He cited its use in munitions, as a flame retardant for military materials, and in specialized applications such as night vision goggles. “The combination of the price spike and the realization of importance has brought attention,” he said, adding that China’s December 2024 restriction on antimony exports, and its current export licensing regime, had further intensified interest. “Those three things—the realization, the geopolitical side, and the price spike—have brought it to the forefront.”Mr. Atkinson previously ran a producing antimony mine, Lake George Antimony. In a February 17, 2026 news release, the company announced it had expanded and outlined further massive antimony-bearing stibnite mineralization at the Marcus (West) Zone at its Bald Hill project.“We discovered a new mineralized zone that’s never been seen before,” Mr. Atkinson said. The discovery was made while constructing a drill road on the west side of the property. “The excavator dug it up and they looked at it—lo and behold, it had stibnite in it.” The zone, named the Marcus Zone after the prospector who first broke it open, has been exposed over approximately 50 to 75 meters. “It’s a brand-new area of mineralization with very spectacular looking stibnite mineralization—stibnite being the mineral that contains antimony,” he said. “Because of the discovery we moved one of our drills there to do discovery drilling.”According to the company, trenching has expanded the area of mineralization at the Marcus (West) Zone, and up to six shallow drill holes are proposed to test the zone at depths between 30 and 50 meters. The 2026 exploration program is being carried out in conjunction with a 10,000-meter definition drilling program on the Main Zone, and a second drill is being added.“We’re trying to do as much as we can at the same time,” Mr. Atkinson said of the Bald Hill project, describing efforts to compress timelines toward a permit application. Work has begun on background environmental studies and stakeholder consultations, alongside technical gap analysis covering mining method and metallurgy. A hydrogeological study has been initiated, and metallurgical testing is underway, with results expected within about a month. “The goal is a permit application to the New Brunswick government by the end of 2026 or early 2027,” he said, noting discussions with the provincial government, the Department of Indigenous Affairs, First Nations, and the local municipality.To support a resource calculation, the company is conducting definition drilling on a grid with maximum 50-meter spacing. “To calculate a resource you need very closely spaced data points—drill hole intersections,” Mr. Atkinson said. “That allows engineers to confidently connect intersections and determine continuity.” To read the full column, go to: https://bit.ly/46cMpNM

Nord Precious Metals Mining Inc. (TSXV: NTH) (OTCQB: CCWOF) operates TTL Laboratories, the only permitted high-grade milling facility in the historic Cobalt Camp of Ontario, where the company has established an integrated position connecting high-grade silver discovery with strategic metals recovery operations. Its flagship Castle property encompasses 58 square kilometres of exploration ground and the past-producing Castle Mine, complemented by the Castle East discovery, which delineated 7.56 million ounces of silver in a now historical inferred resource grading 8,582 g/t Ag.“What we’re trying to do here, Tracy, is actually going into production,” Frank Basa, CEO and Chairman of Nord Precious Metals Mining Inc. (TSXV: NTH) (OTCQB: CCWOF), said in an interview with InvestorNews.com host Tracy Hughes.Basa pointed to a regulatory shift in Ontario. “In Ontario, as of last year, they came out with a thing called a recovery permit, which really simplifies juniors like us to go into production,” he said. The company had initially targeted production from a smaller high-grade tailings deposit estimated at “maybe about half a million ounces of silver,” but a new acquisition has changed the scale.“There’s—on the acquisition we’re trying to do—there’s a NI 43-101 which has 2.9 million ounces,” Basa said, referring to a historical resource estimate on tailings in the Gowganda area.According to Nord’s January 13, 2026, news release, the acquired leases contain a historical indicated resource of 1,940,000 tonnes grading 47.5 g/t silver, yielding approximately 2,960,000 ounces of silver, with a 1981 study concluding potential silver recovery of 82.3% through grinding and conventional leaching. The company cautions that the resource is historical in nature and not treated as current.“They did a lot of metallurgical work on it and they have about 82% recovery on it, which is excellent,” Basa said. “So it’s a large tail pond, and it sits on some of the best ground in the area.”The acquisition consolidates Nord’s position in the Gowganda Silver Camp, approximately 125 kilometres northeast of Sudbury and adjacent to Nord’s existing Castle leases. The Gowganda Camp produced over 60 million ounces of silver and 1.3 million pounds of cobalt between 1909 and 1989, while the broader Cobalt-Gowganda-Silver Centre district produced approximately 550 million ounces of silver and 26 million pounds of cobalt between 1904 and 1989.“This whole area where we are—it’s actually part of the Gowganda camp, which is part of the town of Cobalt,” Basa said. “There is a lot of cobalt here, but it was primarily mined for silver.” He added that in the last century the camp “had the highest silver production globally for many, many years.”Basa said the company plans to build “one plant to treat all the material,” with TTL Laboratories serving as a district processing hub. The January 13 release states that TTL has previously produced a 1,000-ounce silver bar from Cobalt Camp material and has been metallurgically validated for processing historic tailings. “TTL has poured silver before, and we have the bar to prove it,” Basa said in the release.The recovery permit framework is central to the company’s timeline. “This recovery permit that the province created will shorten our timeline, gets rid of all the red tape, and then we could probably go into production,” Basa said. He said the company is targeting activity “probably later this year,” adding that discussions with the Ministry have included requests for modifications to accommodate a larger-scale processing plan.Nord’s integrated strategy includes recovery of cobalt, copper and nickel alongside silver. “We’re going to recover all those,” Basa said, describing cobalt as the longer-term value driver. To read the full column, go to: https://investornews.com/gold-silver-...

A junior miner in Arizona says it has no intention of waiting on the next drill hole.“Why not do that in the mining industry?” John Carter, CEO and director of Silver Bullet Mines Corp. (TSXV: SBMI) (OTCQB: SBMCF), said in an interview with InvestorNews.com host Tracy Hughes, referring to the aviation sector’s hub-and-spoke model. Silver Bullet Mines Corp. describes itself as “a mining company focused on acquisition, exploration, development, and operation of precious metal properties in North America.”Hughes began by referencing the company’s recent acquisition announcement and Carter’s long-stated strategy. Carter said he believed a hub-and-spoke structure allows a mining company “to best utilize the amount of money it has available in order for it to advance its projects and therefore protecting its shareholders.” He compared the approach to major airline hubs—“Dallas–Fort Worth, Chicago, New York, Atlanta. They feed things into the hub and then distribute everything from the hub.” His conclusion: “Well, why not do that in the mining industry?”In Gila County, Arizona, where Carter said “historically there’s been over 600 mines,” the company’s mill and assay facility function as the “hub.” Around it, he said, are “10 under our control that we have within a 30-mile radius.” The structure, he argued, provides speed. “Take it in the morning, have our assays back in the afternoon,” he said, describing how samples can be run internally rather than sent out for weeks. “Go out and take a ton or five and put that through our mill and run it to determine recoveries, metallurgical data that we need.”Carter said the model allows the company to screen more properties than it ultimately acquires. “Not all of them pass muster with what we have,” he said. The criteria, he added, are specific: “It has to be within a certain area, it has to be a certain grade, it has to be a certain commodity, and it has to be able to be recovered in our mill.”Hughes noted that the company’s name can lead to confusion. “I think one misconception people have is that Silver Bullet Mines is just silver, but you’re actually silver, gold and copper.” Carter confirmed that the mill currently processes gravity-recoverable metals and that expansion is underway. “We’re going to double the capacity of our mill and we’re going to add in a circuit so we can start to recover some of those other minerals that we’re missing right now,” he said. “Engineering is being done as we speak.”On February 5, 2026, Silver Bullet Mines Corp. (TSXV: SBMI) (OTCQB: SBMCF) announced it had acquired the Columbia Mine and the Gold Queen Mine in Gila County, Arizona, less than 30 miles from its mill in Globe. The company said the properties consist of twelve BLM mineral claims previously held by Phelps Dodge Corporation and host multiple past-producing copper, gold and silver mines. The acquisition price was described as a small cash payment, with “no shares or any form of royalty” involved.Carter described the assets as “very well-developed copper mines” with “historic resources on it—not compliant 43-101—but historic resources that have a great deal of potential.” He said the company had sought the properties for more than a decade. “Now, the opportunity came along for us to pick it up at a reasonable price, and our cost—$2,400 a year to pay the taxes on it. That’s it.”The company said it has reviewed material from the mines at its mill and determined it can be processed for gold, silver and copper recovery. It is preparing access and evaluating stockpiles for possible shipment, and it said a direct ship ore (DSO) contract is in place subject to final material analysis.Revenue generation has become a focal point. On January 30, 2026, Silver Bullet Mines Corp. (TSXV: SBMI) (OTCQB: SBMCF) announced it had received its first payment for concentrate from its Arizona mining operations.To read the full column, go to: https://bit.ly/4qvpogs

Sheldon Bennett says the future of his company lies not in abandoning crypto, but in redefining what a power-to-server business can become.In a wide-ranging interview with InvestorNews.com host Christopher Ecclestone, Bennett, CEO and Director of DMG Blockchain Solutions Inc. (TSXV: DMGI | OTCQB: DMGGF), described a company that began as a pure-play Bitcoin miner and is now positioning itself as an emerging player in artificial intelligence infrastructure, sovereign data centers, and what he characterizes as national “defense storage.”“Fundamentally, we take power and we put it into servers,” Bennett said. “That’s really what a Bitcoin miner does. And out of that power into servers, we get Bitcoin.” The shift to AI, he explained, is conceptually similar. “You put power into servers—just a different type, GPUs. And instead of getting Bitcoin out, we would get paid in fiat currency.”DMG, which calls itself “a sustainable, vertically integrated blockchain and data center technology company,” operates across two strategic pillars—Core and Core+—and owns a digital asset custody subsidiary, Systemic Trust Corporation, in Alberta. Bennett noted that DMG was “actually the first Bitcoin miner to be listed in Canada,” and that the company is approaching its 10-year anniversary after spending “the last eight years or so… very strongly on Bitcoin mining.”That history has come with volatility. “Crypto is a very volatile asset in many different ways,” Bennett said. “The ups have been great, the downs have been tough.” He put the company’s current market capitalization at “somewhere around $50 million,” compared with a peak of “about $500 million.” At one point, he added, “we used to… be a $5 stock.”The financial results released December 18, 2025, reflect operational growth. Full-year 2025 revenue rose 40% to $47.3 million from $33.9 million in 2024. Cash flow from operations increased 97% to $16.2 million. Year-end cash, short-term investments and digital assets reached $65.2 million, up 81% from the prior year. The company mined 344 bitcoin during the year and ended with 342 bitcoin on its balance sheet. Net loss was $10.3 million, while comprehensive income rose to $11.3 million.“In 2025, we positioned the Company to enter the high-value Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure market,” Bennett said in the release, adding that DMG cultivated relationships with “the Canadian government, enterprises and Indigenous communities to capture unique sovereign AI opportunities.”In the interview, he framed the pivot as a deliberate effort to diversify revenue streams. “Part of our goal getting into the AI data center business is to decouple ourselves from just moving with Bitcoin,” he said. “So we have revenue and assets that are decoupled from Bitcoin.”The vehicle for that repositioning will be a new operating focus under the banner of DMG Infrastructure. “We will spend more time in 2026 talking about DMG Infrastructure versus DMG Blockchain,” Bennett said. AI data center assets will move under that structure, while blockchain-specific assets remain within DMG Blockchain. “Blockchain-specific assets and business will stay in DMG Blockchain. AI data center–specific assets and operations will be in DMG Infrastructure.”The name itself, he acknowledged, reflects an earlier era. “When we went public, our bankers said… ‘blockchain’s hot. You’ve got to put the word blockchain in.’” Now, he said, there has been “discussion of should we just take the blockchain out and be more general,” though the current plan is to emphasize DMG Infrastructure without immediately renaming the parent company.To read the full column, go to: https://bit.ly/4acVR6n

A newly renamed junior explorer is preparing to test a drill-ready copper-gold target in British Columbia’s Golden Triangle after completing a corporate restructuring and publishing a new technical report. In an interview with InvestorNews.com host Tracy Hughes, Kevin Keough, CEO and Director of Oreterra Metals Corp. (TSXV: OTMC), said the company’s rebranding reflects a reset in both identity and strategy following its emergence from Romios Gold Resources Inc..“The name itself actually just emerged from a process we ran with the directors to really come up with a name that would represent the new company and the new direction,” Keough said. He noted that Romios “had been around for many years” and held “exceptionally good assets,” but also faced “corporate issues.” Keough said he became involved in June of last year “mainly because of the strength of its assets,” and that the company has since undergone “a major restructuring process over the last seven months or so,” formally re-emerging as Oreterra on February 2.Keough said the company is now positioned to focus on exploration at Trek South, a porphyry copper-gold target that he described as “a completely new porphyry copper-gold target” and “never drilled.” He emphasized that the target has only taken shape in recent years, saying it “really only emerged as a very thought-out target since COVID.” He framed Trek South as a discovery-driven opportunity, adding, “That can only come from a discovery of merit—I mean, a really significant discovery.”Drawing on past experience, Keough said he had previously delivered discoveries “in the same general area of the world that Oreterra is presently active in,” referencing the Saddle North discovery that led to the development of GT Gold. “It paid off with GT Gold big time,” he said, adding, “We think that this new target, Trek South, could also pay off big time.” He said the company decided the target was “strong enough” to warrant focusing “all our assets on” it during the upcoming field season.Keough said Oreterra plans to replicate the exploration approach used at Saddle North, describing it as a “disciplined discovery-driven model.” He explained that porphyry copper-gold systems “tend to be very big,” with “fairly consistently distributed” mineralization compared with high-grade vein systems. Because of that consistency and scale, he said, they “typically require a much lower density of drilling to deliver resources.” At Trek South, Oreterra intends to use “relatively wide-spaced holes,” laid out in “fences of holes—each hole roughly 200 metres apart,” which he said “indicates the scale of a target.”The company recently completed a National Instrument 43-101 technical report for the Trek property, which Keough said was commissioned to give shareholders and potential investors confidence. “We decided to do it because we want to provide potential investors and our shareholders—existing shareholders—with confidence that what we’re proposing to do at Trek, and the property itself, is really worth the effort,” he said. He added that the report shows “a lot of geoscience backing up this target,” and described Trek South as “actually the best copper-gold porphyry prospect I’ve seen in my career,” citing its surface exposure as “superior to most in British Columbia.”Keough confirmed that Oreterra will be exhibiting at Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada Convention, saying the company will have a booth at the event after missing a booth at Roundup due to the timing of the name change. Looking ahead, he said near-term activity will focus on preparing for the summer drilling season in British Columbia, noting that demand for drillers and helicopter support is already high. “It’s all underway right now,” he said, adding that a financing is planned “very shortly” to fund the Trek South program.To read the full column, go to: https://bit.ly/3MBPznD

Cesium remains one of the least discussed but most constrained materials in the critical minerals universe, and that scarcity is now shaping the near-term focus of Grid Metals Corp. (TSXV: GRDM | OTCQB: MSMGF) as it advances a near-surface cesium discovery in southeastern Manitoba.“Our company is a Canadian junior exploration company based in Toronto, with operations in Manitoba,” said Robin Dunbar, President, CEO & Director of Grid Metals, in an interview with InvestorNews.com host Jack Lifton. Dunbar said the company made a strategic decision last fall to concentrate its efforts on a cesium project located about an hour from Winnipeg and directly accessible from the Trans-Canada Highway.“We’ve just completed our second round of drilling there, which we started in October, and we’re on our third now,” Dunbar said, referring to exploration at Grid’s Falcon West Property. The company has reported drill results defining a near-surface zone of cesium mineralization hosted in pollucite. “We hope to define that deposit and then bring it to market as quickly as possible, with as short a timeline as possible,” he said.Dunbar described cesium as both rare and strategically constrained. “We’re primarily focused on cesium because we believe that it is a critical metal and it’s in short supply with a lack of feedstock globally,” he said, adding that supply is “mostly controlled by the Chinese,” while North American markets continue to seek domestic sources. Grid’s drilling has targeted pollucite mineralization that can host very high cesium grades. “We’re drilling a pollucite mineralization which can host up to 40% cesium,” Dunbar said. “We’ve had some very high-grade hits and it’s very near surface.”Recent results released by the company support those statements. In February 2026, Grid reported high-grade cesium intercepts at the Lucy South pegmatite within Falcon West, including 12.5 metres grading 5.2% Cs₂O with an internal interval of 3.0 metres at 20.5% Cs₂O. The mineralization has been defined over an initial area of approximately 100 metres by 30 metres and remains open in multiple directions. A Phase 2 drill program has commenced to expand and infill known intersections.Dunbar emphasized that cesium’s processing characteristics differentiate it from many other critical minerals. “The great thing about cesium is when you do go to process it, you can make a saleable concentrate by crushing and ore sorting the rock,” he said. “So you don’t need extensive infrastructure or tailings. So the permitting process will be much shorter, and Manitoba is a very good jurisdiction to bring a project in.”Lifton underscored Canada’s position in the global cesium market, noting that Manitoba has historically been central to supply. He also pointed to the simplicity of processing and the absence of toxic byproducts. Dunbar confirmed Grid’s familiarity with existing operations in the province. “We’ve actually had a lot of interaction with the people at the Tanco mine over the years,” he said, adding that ore sorting allows separation of cesium and lithium into saleable streams with limited capital intensity.Market interest has begun to surface, Dunbar said, though the company’s near-term emphasis remains on defining tonnage and continuity. “Everything that we see from the market side is that there is a near-term shortage of ore,” he said. “We think there’s a window here for a company that can come to market with material.” He added: “The more material that we have, the more we can define, the more options I think we’ll have.”Dunbar said Grid has had contact with Canadian federal authorities regarding critical minerals, and described the questions he is hearing as resource-driven. “Will you have a resource, and how much will you have, and when will you have it?” he said.To read the full column, go to: https://bit.ly/4bNIAlW

Since listing in April, Allied Critical Metals Inc. (CSE: ACM | OTCQB: ACMIF) has been advancing a redevelopment timeline that few Western tungsten projects can credibly outline, centered on the past-producing Borralha Tungsten Project in northern Portugal and framed by an explicit goal of entering production as early as 2026.“Let’s start with the deposit that makes everything possible,” said Roy Bonnell, CEO & Director of Allied, in an interview with InvestorNews.com host Tracy Hughes. “It’s a brownfield deposit in the north of Portugal with infrastructure second to none in place and a government that’s motivated in this geopolitical world we all live in to assist us into getting into production as soon as we possibly can.”The company’s stated production timeline is anchored to a pilot-scale processing facility. Bonnell said Allied expects to reach production “nine months after financing of our smaller… pilot plant,” adding that this could occur in 2026. He attributed the company’s access to capital not only to management experience but also to market conditions. “There’s lots of assistance and there’s lots of private capital out there that wants to be part of that growing industry,” he said, referencing what he described as a broader Western effort to increase autonomy in critical metals.Operationally, Allied has initiated a fully funded 20,000-metre drilling program at Borralha, launched in January 2026. “There are drills on the property right now,” Bonnell said, noting that activity is expected to scale to four drills by March and continue through much of the year. The program is designed to support infill drilling, test extensions of known zones, and pursue new discoveries. “There’ll be some new discoveries as well that we hope to achieve in 2026,” he said.Borralha’s history as a producing mine has informed Allied’s exploration strategy. Rather than focusing solely on the underground vein systems historically mined, the company has targeted breccia zones that were largely overlooked by previous operators. “Rather than follow the underground veins that were being mined for 80 years, we went to drill the breccia,” Bonnell explained. “That’s the reason we’ve had some spectacular results, including what we think are some of the best intercepts ever drilled for tungsten.”Permitting has progressed alongside exploration. Allied recently received environmental approval for Borralha, which Bonnell said benefited from the project’s brownfield status and local support. “We had great social acceptability of our project, and that obviously expedited our environmental permitting,” he said, adding that the region’s mining history and government engagement played a role.The next major milestone is a Preliminary Economic Assessment, which Bonnell said is expected before the start of the PDAC convention in March. “Obviously, our goal is to have that PEA out this coming month,” he said.Portugal’s role in Allied’s development strategy features prominently in the company’s planning. Bonnell described the country as “a NATO country… an EU country… with first world infrastructure,” highlighting Borralha’s proximity to Porto’s deep-water port and nearby hydroelectric power. “A lot of these other projects that are racing with us to get into production in tungsten have to build out their infrastructure,” he said. “We have world-class infrastructure already constructed for us.”Government engagement extends beyond permitting. Bonnell said Allied has been in discussions with Portuguese defense authorities and development institutions. “We’ve already announced that we’ve been talking to ID Defense Portugal and we’ve been named a project of national interest,” he said, adding that the company is also engaging with private offtakers in Europe and the United States.To read the full column, go to: https://bit.ly/4ckyJnG

The market can ignore a deposit for years—until the supply chain can’t.Resouro Strategic Metals Inc. (ASX: RAU) (TSXV: RSM) (OTCQB: RSGOF) is a Canadian incorporated mineral exploration and development company advancing mineral projects in Brazil, led by Christopher Eager as CEO and chairman. Its flagship is the Tiros Titanium–Rare Earths Project in Minas Gerais, spanning 28 mineral concessions totaling 497 square kilometers, about 350 kilometers from Belo Horizonte. Resouro’s Mineral Resource Estimate for Tiros reports 165 million tonnes of titanium dioxide and 5.5 million tonnes of total rare earth oxides within a Measured and Indicated Resource of 1.4 billion tonnes grading 12% titanium dioxide and 4,000 ppm total rare earth oxides.On InvestorNews.com, host and market maker consultant Darren Cudmore asked Eager—Resouro’s CEO and chairman—why titanium matters and how Tiros fits into today’s critical minerals narrative. Eager began with scale, citing both size and grade across titanium dioxide and total rare earth oxides. “Well, the Tiros project is immense,” he said, then anchored his claim in a comparison to the dominant deposit type in rare earth development. “If it was a standalone regolith-hosted rare earth project… we would be the largest and highest-grade soft rock rare earths project in the world.”He then contrasted Tiros’s titanium dioxide grades with the more familiar mineral-sands benchmark. “A typical project that produces titanium dioxide is a beach sands project, which has 1% or 2% if you’re lucky of TiO₂,” he said. “Our global resource grade is 12% and our high-grade zone is 23%.” He argued that combination—titanium dioxide and regolith-hosted rare earths in one system—would be unusual on a global peer set. “So you’re looking at a project which is the largest titanium project in the world and highest grade, coupled with the largest rare earth deposit in the world, regolith style.”From there, Eager separated titanium into two markets: pigments and metal. The pigment side, he said, is large and tied to broad economic growth. “This is about a $22 billion-a-year industry,” he said, describing pigments used in “plastics, paints, fillers,” and adding that the market grows “about a 2.5% compound annual growth rate in line with world GDP growth.” But he drew a sharp line between downstream pricing and upstream demand. “The pigment market is in oversupply,” Eager said. “So we’re in the mine feedstock part of it, which is in demand.”He described a second pathway aimed at titanium metal, including discussions with a potential offtaker. “We’re in discussions with an offtaker based in Texas,” he said. “The idea is that we have two products. We have coarse titanium dioxide… and it goes to the pigment market. And then we have fine titanium dioxide… converting it to titanium metal.” Titanium metal, Eager said, is a smaller market but growing faster—“sort of 6% to 8% compound annual growth rate”—and he listed performance characteristics that drive adoption: “it’s lighter, stronger, doesn’t corrode, has about a 3,000-degree melting temperature.” He pointed to increasing aerospace usage and newer areas like additive manufacturing. “Titanium metal can be 3D printed,” he said, citing “prosthetics for artificial hips and knees.”Eager also tied titanium metal supply to geopolitics and the search for alternative sources. “Traditionally, the vast bulk of titanium metal was exported from Russia as sponge, and of course there’s sanctions on that now,” he said. “So we do need other suppliers.” He added that titanium metal sits alongside rare earth elements in U.S. strategic priorities, citing “the recently announced stockpile—the new metals vault that Trump announced yesterday”—and said, “titanium metal is one of the top of the list.”To read the full column, go to: https://bit.ly/46GqFtM

The politics of stockpiles are easy; the physics of stockpiles are not. The moment you move from a headline to a warehouse, “critical minerals” stop being a talking point and become a punishing exercise in specification, processing, and time.In a recent InvestorNews.com interview, Tracy Hughes pressed Jack Lifton, Co-Chair of the Critical Minerals Institute (CMI), on the week’s headline-grabbing announcement: President Donald Trump’s “Project Vault,” a proposed $12 billion Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve backed by $10 billion in U.S. Export-Import Bank financing and roughly $2 billion in private investment, according to multiple reports.Lifton did not begin with applause. He began with a warning. “I wonder about this stockpile event because it really — it’s theater,” he said, arguing that the difficult work is not finding a slogan, but defining the material, the form, the storage method, and the conversion pathway back into an end-user product. “Developing a stockpile for any one thing is quite a bit of work,” he said, before widening the aperture: “if you’re talking about stockpiling a variety of critical minerals and materials, this is an enormous amount of work and it’s certainly beyond the ability of anybody in the government to handle.”To make the point vivid, Lifton chose a metal that is not even “critical” in the fashionable sense. Steel. “Even steel comes in so many forms,” he said, running through a cascade of practical questions—ore, pig iron, crude steel, rolled goods, chemistry, stainless versus alloyed varieties—each choice determining whether what you hold is useful or inert when the moment of need arrives. “All of this talk about ‘we’re going to stockpile,’ it’s speaking to the public as if all it takes is: ‘We’re going to need cement, so we’ll store a whole lot of cement.’ But of course, you don’t store cement — you store the ingredients to make cement.” The subtext was sharper than the phrasing: “I don’t understand what the government is talking about… I think it’s because they don’t understand the details.”Rare earths, he suggested, make the storage problem harder, not easier. “The storage of rare earths is so complex that it’s going to take some time to work out exactly what we mean by that,” he said. “And we have no references. No one has ever stored rare earths.” The recurring theme in his critique was not a lack of money, but a lack of operational architecture. “Politicians throw money at things and then assume the problem is solved,” he said. “All they’re creating here is a huge problem of detail, and I don’t hear anything about who’s going to solve it.”Hughes then asked the question that turns a headline into a logistics plan: where would it all go? Lifton pointed to the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), the government’s traditional mechanism for acquiring and managing strategic materials, while arguing that a project of this magnitude could swamp its capacity. “The U.S. government has an agency called the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA),” he said. “This would completely overwhelm it.” If Project Vault proceeds, he expects a congressional directive and appropriation flowing through that system—yet on a scale he described as unprecedented. “That would be the biggest appropriation in the history of the DLA — probably more than the DLA has bought in the last 50 years,” he said, adding that it would require staffing up with “skilled people.”Then came the interview’s most candid illustration of how public policy can collide with private incentives. On the idea that private investors would help fund the reserve, Lifton offered a blunt market hypothesis: “I would guess it would be people who’ve invested in the various companies that are supposedly going to produce critical materials.” To read the full column, go to: https://bit.ly/4a8RZ4U

In an era when supply chains have become geopolitical weapons, the most strategic materials are often the ones most people can’t name—and scandium may be the purest example. In a recent InvestorNews.com conversation, world-renowned critical minerals expert Jack Lifton sat down with Guy Bourassa to discuss what Scandium Canada Ltd. (TSXV: SCD) calls North America’s largest primary source of scandium: the Crater Lake Project in northeastern Québec’s Nunavik Territory, roughly 200 kilometers north-northeast of Schefferville. The company’s stated ambition is not simply to build a mine, but to bring a primary scandium supply into production in order to enable the development and commercialization of aluminum-scandium (Al-Sc) alloys—lighter, higher-performance materials aimed at a world that now prices resilience alongside efficiency.Bourassa described a project that, in his telling, has moved beyond concept and into method. Work began in 2018, he said, and after a 2022 preliminary economic assessment, the company is advancing toward a pre-feasibility study targeted for summer 2026, with a feasibility study planned before the end of 2027. But he dwelled less on schedules than on a market constraint that has haunted scandium for decades: buyers want certainty before they redesign products around it. “When you speak with large potential end users… what they want to be sure of is long-term, secure, and reliable supply,” Bourassa said, arguing that a primary deposit—rather than scandium recovered as a byproduct—changes the entire negotiation. If scandium comes from a secondary source, he noted, “you are at the mercy of another mineral that you do not control and that the producer does not control.” A primary source, by contrast, offers the one thing aerospace and defense procurement both demand: continuity.That logic is now shaping the company’s strategy. Bourassa told Lifton that Scandium Canada made a deliberate decision in 2022 to pursue alloy development in parallel with mine development—an attempt to help build the market case, define pricing, and make future offtake discussions more than theoretical. The company, he said, developed two Al-Sc alloys, filed patents, and created a commercialization-focused unit—now branded Scandium+—to accelerate the alloy business “well before the development of the mine,” turning metallurgy into an early demand engine rather than a footnote that arrives after permitting.Formally, Scandium+ has been positioned as the company’s bridge between resource development and industrial adoption: a dedicated division aimed at commercializing proprietary, patent-pending aluminum-scandium alloys and alloy powders, with particular emphasis on additive manufacturing (3D printing) and other applications where weight reduction and performance gains justify rapid qualification. In the company’s disclosures, Scandium+ is tasked with advancing Al-Sc powder research and development, identifying the most promising markets in collaboration with Productique Québec and the National Research Council of Canada, and intensifying engagement with industrial users in strategic sectors such as aerospace, automotive, advanced manufacturing, and 3D printing. The point is straightforward: Scandium Canada is trying to be measured not only as an upstream mineral developer, but as a participant in the value chain where specifications are written, powders are qualified, and purchasing decisions become repeat orders.The company’s December 2025 annual review tried to put operational weight behind that narrative: an updated NI 43-101 mineral resource estimate for the TG Zone at Crater Lake; validation of metallurgical process parameters through a 500-kilogram pilot test; and the formal launch of Scandium+, alongside expanded outreach to industrial users and deeper engagement with local communities.

Defense Metals Corp.’s (TSXV: DEFN | OTCQB: DFMTF) development of the Wicheeda Rare Earth Element Project in central British Columbia — which the company says positions Wicheeda as one of the most advanced undeveloped rare earth deposits in North America and Europe — has been marked by a series of technical milestones, strengthened leadership, capital market support and stakeholder partnerships over the past year. At the centre of that progression is the company’s 2025 NI 43-101 Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS), a report that confirmed robust mineral resources and reserves and set the foundation for more definitive work toward commercial production. In a recent interview with InvestorNews.com host Jack Lifton, a renowned critical minerals expert, Mark Tory, President, CEO and Director of Defense Metals, elaborated on the status of the Wicheeda project, the company’s strategic priorities and ongoing technical and stakeholder engagement.Tory described Wicheeda’s core value in terms familiar to supply-chain analysts: the project’s principal output consists of neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr) — rare earths that are crucial inputs for permanent magnets used in electric vehicles, wind turbines, advanced manufacturing and defence technologies. He reiterated the importance of extracting and concentrating these elements efficiently, noting that metallurgical performance and concentrate quality underpin much of the project’s economic case. The interview also reflected Wicheeda’s geographic and logistical context. Located about 80 kilometres northeast of Prince George, B.C., the project benefits from proximity to paved highways, hydroelectric transmission lines, gas pipelines, rail connections and port facilities — conditions that reduce the complexity associated with more remote development sites. A central theme in the conversation was the company’s work on a Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS), expected to begin in the first half of 2026. Following completion of the PFS, Defense Metals has been conducting additional test work and engineering optimisation in preparation for this next phase and has engaged Hatch Ltd. to help determine the optimal configuration and location for future processing facilities. Tory also spoke to capital and balance-sheet considerations. Defense Metals successfully completed multiple private placements in 2025, including an oversubscribed financing in late October that strengthened the company’s cash position for ongoing technical work. In addition, the company has received a Letter of Interest from Export Development Canada (EDC) for possible project financing of up to US$250 million to support development and construction, signalling institutional interest in the asset. Indigenous engagement has been an active part of the company’s approach. Defense Metals has maintained a partnership with the McLeod Lake Indian Band, which has participated in advocacy and consultation efforts with government officials. In November 2025 meetings in Ottawa, both the Band and Canadian officials reiterated support for the Wicheeda Project’s permitting and development strategy, emphasising its contribution to domestic rare earth supply chains and regional economic opportunities. Beyond the technical and stakeholder matters that dominate many mining discussions, Tory made clear that building real commercial momentum remains central to Wicheeda’s strategy — underscoring ongoing talks with potential downstream partners, from magnet makers and alloy producers to original equipment manufacturers across Europe, a hub for companies reliant on secure supplies of critical materials for electric vehicles and advanced machinery.

The rare earth industry has stopped being a supply chain and started behaving like a lever of power. In a recent Critical Minerals Institute (CMI) Masterclass, Melissa “Mel” Sanderson framed the moment with the kind of blunt historical bookends that turn policy talk into something closer to strategy: in 2011, she argued, “today began” when China curtailed Japan’s access to rare earths—an early signal that minerals could be used as statecraft, not commerce. A decade later, she said, COVID exposed a different vulnerability: “the longer your supply chain, the more fragile it is.” Put those shocks together and you get what Sanderson called “a geopolitical landscape in flux not seen since World War II,” with the world—whether it admits it or not—slipping into “a global economic war.”She opened with a deceptively simple question, limited to four countries: Brazil, India, the United States, and Canada. Which one is on track to “success” over the next decade—defined as national security, the well-being of citizens, and control of a critical mineral supply chain?Constantine Karayannopoulos—the former President, CEO and Chairman of Neo Performance Materials Inc. (TSX: NEO | OTCQX: NOPMF)—began with a warning that sounded less like punditry than scar tissue: “there are no guarantees of success. There are no magic bullets.” Still, he said he “really like[s] what Brazil is doing,” describing advisory work with the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) and a “billion-dollar fund” structure he characterized as unusually practical: a pool of public and private capital—he cited contributions including a “couple hundred million dollars” from Vale—allocated not by political ministry, but by “two arms-length financial institutions… private equity companies.” In his account, the design mattered as much as the size: grants, equity, and debt deployed across the chain “all the way down to EVs and motors and magnets,” with professional managers forced to price risk instead of slogans.Sanderson’s follow-up to Jack Lifton sharpened the problem: if you were picking winners in a sector dominated by juniors, what criteria would you use? Lifton answered in three words—“Competence, experience, prior success”—then accused northern governments of funding in the dark. “National governments… have very little technical due diligence competence,” he said, arguing that private capital avoids the space because it can’t see a credible path to profit. When he looked at U.S. award decisions, he said, “I cannot believe they’ve done that. I don’t see companies with experienced people with a record of success.”Then Lifton broke from Karayannopoulos’s country pick. “I would pick India,” he said, not because the ore is easy, but because the labor is deep: a vast reservoir of engineers, a huge internal market, and long-standing industrial know-how across the “enabled-product supply chain.” He claimed India is often omitted from popular lists of separation capacity despite an operating plant he said was funded by Toyota and Indian Rare Earths Limited (IREL), and he noted—pointedly—that India had “prohibited the export of finished rare earths.” Sanderson translated Lifton’s core thesis into a single phrase: “the knowledge gap,” the element that “takes the longest to develop.”That knowledge gap fed her next provocation: is every country chasing “soup to nuts” supply chains doomed, and will today’s blocs—she name-checked BRICS—collapse into a new specialization model? Lifton’s reply was immediate: “No.” Globalization, he said, is ending; the world is “fracturing into regional and even national-focused powerhouses.” The United States, in his view, will be “self-sufficient” in what it needs in rare earths within 10 years, but not a competitive exporter because “our costs will be too high.” He mocked the breezy rhetoric of “redeveloping” capacity: “That’s like bringing back your teeth. They don’t come back.”To read the full column, go to: https://bit.ly/46tuMt5

Control of 582 hectares of Brazilian farmland has become the hinge on which Homerun Resources Inc. (TSXV: HMR | OTCQB: HMRFF) plans to swing its entire energy-transition strategy. In a wide-ranging conversation with InvestorNews.com host Tracy Hughes, CEO and Director Brian Leeners ties that land package—Fazenda Conjunto São José e Nova Esperança in the Santa Maria Eterna Silica Sand District—directly to a three-year campaign to transform a Google search into district-scale control of one of the world’s most coveted high-purity silica sand resources. For a company that describes itself as “building the silica-powered backbone of the energy transition” across four verticals—Silica, Solar, Energy Storage and Energy Solutions—the geography is not incidental. Anchored in Bahia, Brazil, Homerun’s entire model rests on a unique high-purity, low-iron silica resource that can be transformed into premium solar glass, silica-based thermal energy storage and advanced high-value silica-based materials. The 582-hectare farm is not just another acquisition; it is the physical platform on which those ambitions are meant to stand. Hughes opens the interview by reading directly from the company’s statement: “Just over three years ago, we were the only party to identify the globally unique value of the Santa Maria Eterna Silica Sand District in the global solar glass and energy storage sectors… That original plan has manifested today into Homerun obtaining the desired control of the district through direct resource ownership, resource partnership, and direct land ownership.” The origin story is disarmingly modest. “If you go back 36 months, Tracy—almost exactly 36 months, a little bit longer—I identified that actual resource in a Google search that was prompted by my wife, who’s from Bahia,” Leeners recalls. She suggested he look for critical elements in the state; he typed “high purity silica Bahia” into a browser. A PhD thesis popped up, its author still reachable at the same Gmail address. That chain—an academic paper, a family rooted in Brazil’s silica business, a private organization that owned part of the district—became the first link in what is now, effectively, territorial control. From there, the work turns methodical. Through his Brazilian partner and Homerun’s Country Manager, Antonio Vitor, Leeners and Homerun cultivated relationships with the state resource company, Companhia Baiana de Pesquisa Mineral (CBPM), and the private owners scattered across Santa Maria Eterna. CBPM, he explains, is mandated to find mineralization, do early-stage work on a limited budget and then move projects into private hands. Over three years Homerun secured a series of mineral leases from CBPM and entered long-term material supply agreements with other silica owners, including Jundu, a district producer controlled by global silica player Sibelco. “We ended up getting all of CBPM’s assets in the district,” Leeners notes. The only significant piece not under Homerun’s control is Jundu itself—“and Jundu is our partner.” Land was always the missing layer. Early on, the company secured long-term surface rights—structured as a 99-year renewable arrangement—over a roughly 64-hectare parcel at Fazenda São José, earmarked for an industrial complex to purify raw silica into advanced materials and manufacture solar glass. But the real pivot came when Homerun, working initially with the local municipality and then directly with the owner, moved to acquire what Leeners calls “the largest farm in the area, which is huge—several hundred hectares—which sits over large portions of the silica that are controlled by other parties in the district.” That description now has a precise number: 582 hectares of land and surface rights at Fazenda Conjunto São José e Nova Esperança, directly adjacent to the initial industrial site. To read the full column, go to: https://bit.ly/3OhzAeN

Power is shifting beneath North America’s feet, and the tremors are being misread in Washington.What looks, on the surface, like another round of cross-border political noise — Greenland one week, Governor Mark Carney the next — is, in Jack Lifton’s telling, something far deeper: the United States coming to terms with the fact that Canada is no longer a junior partner, and never really was. “Canada is a mature nation today,” Lifton said, tracing the misunderstanding back through a century of shared but asymmetrical history. “When American presidents have dealt with Canada up until now, they’ve been dealing with a country they perceive as a junior member of any kind of alliance. This is all gone.”Lifton’s frame is historical, almost personal. He recalled his father, turned away at 14 from enlistment in 1914, desperate to fight for the British Empire, and his mother’s U.S. immigration papers from 1926 listing her as a “British subject,” because there was no such thing yet as Canadian citizenship. He pointed to Normandy, where British, American, and Canadian troops landed together — and then sharpened the memory. “Who had the toughest fight? The Canadian army — the Royal Canadian Army.”That arc matters because, as Lifton put it bluntly, “Canada is now a mature, independent nation. It’s concerned about its future, its people, and it’s one of the top five richest nations per capita in the world — far wealthier than Great Britain is today.” In his view, Washington hasn’t fully absorbed that reality. Canada still gets treated like a “baby brother,” even as trade between the two countries exceeds $3 billion a day. “When Prime Minister Carney gets up in the morning,” Lifton said, “he’s thinking: what’s best for Canada.”The friction, he argued, is not ideological but emotional. “They’re losing their baby brother. That’s what this is all about.”That sense of strategic loss extends well beyond Ottawa. For Lifton, it is inseparable from a 25-year arc of American decision-making that culminated in the rise of China. He pointed to the moment the United States supported China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. “Why? They’ll never achieve anything, and we can convert them to a liberal democracy,” he said, recalling the logic at the time. “Twenty-five years later, these same people are saying, ‘Oh my God, that was a big mistake.’”Against that backdrop, Lifton is deeply skeptical of Washington’s increasingly hands-on role in critical minerals and rare earths. When Tracy Hughes raised the U.S. government’s latest investment in USA Rare Earth (NASDAQ: USAR) — the largest to date — Lifton didn’t hesitate. “I think it’s a very bad idea,” he said. “I don’t think the American government has enough knowledge and experience in the field of critical minerals to be making such vastly expensive judgments.”His critique cuts to capital allocation. “The private sector chooses companies to support because their due diligence tells them there’s a high probability of success,” he said. “Government doesn’t think like that. Government says, ‘We think the country needs X. Here’s a guy who says he can produce it. We’ll just throw a lot of money at him.’ This is not the way to use capital.”Asked about overlapping federal investments — from magnet plants in Oklahoma to prior funding of Vacuumschmelze — Lifton shrugged off the idea of coordination. “Perhaps in Washington it’s a urinating contest between departments of state — who can give away money the fastest and how much,” he said, noting the sheer scale of budgets involved. “In bureaucracy you have to spend your budget in the budget year… and they’re certainly doing a good job of getting rid of it.”To read the full column, go to: https://bit.ly/3NJXa3P

Silver is no longer just creeping higher—it's surging, and the market is being forced to reckon with a metal that has quietly moved from monetary afterthought to industrial linchpin.That was the framing that emerged as InvestorNews.com host Tracy Hughes sat down with Peter Clausi, Director and VP of Capital Markets at Silver Bullet Mines Corp. (TSXV: SBMI | OTCQB: SBMCF, as silver prices smashed through levels few analysts were prepared to model, let alone defend. When Hughes reminded Clausi of a conversation at PDAC the year before—when silver was trading at US$26–27 per ounce—his reaction was blunt. “You asked me where I saw silver ending 2025,” Clausi recalled. “I gave you a prediction of between $35 and $40 based on infrastructure issues, demand issues, and optimism. Well, it appears my estimate for 2025 was off, and boy has it skyrocketed. Today, it briefly cleared $115. I think I saw it at $123. Trading back down around $110 an ounce, which is just incredible.”The obvious question followed: had investors already missed the move. Clausi’s answer was characteristically cautious in form, but emphatic in substance. “I’m not a securities advisor, so do your own due diligence,” he said, before adding, “in my opinion, given the structural issues and the demand side, silver’s just getting started.” What once looked like a long, steady climb now appears compressed. “I had seen a long climb up where it’s making it to the 200 to 250 range over a five-year period. We might get there a lot sooner than that, but silver’s just getting going.”Unlike gold, whose rally is often explained through macro anxiety and monetary debasement, silver is being pulled by a web of physical constraints. Clausi dismissed the old shorthand that silver merely shadows gold. “For a long time, silver was the poor man’s gold,” he said. “Some people still talk about that wacky thing called the gold-silver ratio, which makes no sense to me.” Gold, he noted, had now cleared US$5,000 an ounce on its own merits, while silver was contending with pressures that had little to do with safe-haven psychology. “Silver is very much an industrial mineral and it’s very much in demand. It’ll be very hard to affect the green revolution without silver.”That demand is not abstract. Clausi walked through the metal’s ubiquity with the ease of someone who has repeated the argument often, yet still sounds faintly surprised by it. “You can’t have effective solar panels without silver,” he said. “There’s silver in the mirror you shave in, silver in your laptop circuit boards, silver in lights, silver in watches.” Roughly 700 million ounces a year are consumed by industrial applications alone, he noted—“not plates, not teacups, not jewelry”—and for several consecutive years, demand has exceeded mine supply. Recycling contributes only about 10% of annual production. “We’re still in a deficit position,” Clausi said. “And for any fan of capitalism, you know what happens. If demand exceeds supply, price goes up. So, welcome to $100 silver.”Policy decisions have added friction to an already tight market. Hughes pointed to China’s export restrictions and the U.S. decision to add silver to its critical minerals list. Clausi was skeptical of the latter, even as he acknowledged its market impact. China’s controls, he said, amount to a de facto embargo: only 44 Chinese companies are permitted to export silver, each requiring state approval. “That’s just layers of bureaucracy which will slow the international movement of silver.” As for the U.S. Geological Survey’s move, Clausi was unsparing. “They’re now 60 minerals out of 118 on my periodic table that they’ve deemed critical. And if everything’s critical, nothing is critical.” Silver is abundant in the United States, he argued, and the rationale offered felt circular. Still, he conceded, “those two items are adding to the demand side for silver.”

Greenland has increasingly been framed in public debate as a potential cornerstone of future critical minerals supply. Yet in a wide-ranging conversation with InvestorNews.com host Tracy Hughes, Jack Lifton, co chair of the Critical Minerals Institute (CMI) and one of the world’s most respected critical minerals experts, challenged that narrative directly. Lifton argued that claims surrounding Greenland’s mineral potential routinely blur a critical distinction between geological occurrence and economically recoverable reserves, leading to conclusions that are not supported by technical or financial reality.Asked whether Greenland holds large, untapped critical minerals reserves, Lifton was unequivocal. “I would say no,” he said, stressing that the term reserves has a precise technical meaning. “When you say reserves, you’re talking about things that we can economically and efficiently recover. I don’t think that that’s the case in Greenland.” The distinction, he noted, is frequently lost in media coverage, where the presence of minerals in the ground is often conflated with commercial viability.That misunderstanding carries geopolitical consequences. As Washington once again signals interest in Greenland as a strategic asset, Lifton warned that the United States risks misreading the broader competitive landscape, particularly with respect to Canada. With European governments openly prioritizing independence in critical minerals supply, he argued that Ottawa is positioning itself accordingly. “Canada’s vast resources of critical minerals are going to go to the highest and friendliest bidder,” Lifton said. “In my opinion, that’s going to be first of all the European Union and the UK, and second, some people in Asia that maybe the United States is not so friendly with.”The issue, in Lifton’s view, is not ambition but expertise. While some Americans admire Donald Trump’s aggressive negotiating style, Lifton questioned its applicability to natural resource development. “His expertise does not extend to natural resources,” he said. “The world of critical resources is a different world from building golf courses. And I don’t think it’s going to work out.” Natural resource supply chains, he emphasized, are capital intensive, slow to build, and resistant to political pressure.This same misunderstanding underpins the widely repeated claim that China “controls” the world’s rare earths. Lifton rejected that framing. “China as a nation seems to have about 40% of the known reserves,” he said. “That means that the rest of the world has 60%.” China’s dominance, he explained, lies not in geology but in execution. “They have the overwhelming majority of the downstream supply chain. That’s the problem.” The real chokepoints are not mines, but downstream processing.Viewed through that lens, Greenland’s appeal weakens further. Proposals to build advanced rare earth processing facilities there fail basic feasibility tests. “Not only does the infrastructure not exist,” Lifton said, “the people to manufacture the infrastructure don’t exist.” He estimated that developing comparable downstream capacity in Greenland could cost roughly ten times more than doing so in Quebec, which already hosts promising deposits alongside power, water, transport, and skilled labor.Timelines do little to improve the case. Suggestions that Greenland could become a rare earth producer within a decade ignore political and financial realities. “Ten years… means two and a half presidential administrations,” Lifton observed, citing shifting congressional priorities and policy instability. “How does that benefit anybody?” Private capital, he added, is the ultimate test. “If private equity that understands how to use money in the most profitable way is not jumping into this arena, it means this arena is dangerous.” Governments, by contrast, have a long record of absorbing losses.