In Quebec’s sub‑arctic taiga, the Naskapi Nation of Kawawachikamach has done more than permit a mine on its ancestral land—it has bought into the metal that could lighten every jet, satellite, and electric vehicle now on drawing boards around the world. Scandium Canada Ltd. (TSXV: SCD), which is advancing the Crater Lake deposit as what it calls “the world’s leading primary source of scandium,” confirmed last week that the community‑controlled Taasipitaakin Trust invested C$334,000 for 16.7 million units—enough for a 5% equity stake in the junior miner.“It’s a very important milestone that we just reached,” CEO Guy Bourassa told InvestorNews host Tracy Hughes. The transaction caps a year‑long courtship that began with an April 2024 pre‑development agreement, paused for a band‑council election, and resumed only after newly elected leaders had, as Bourassa put it, “the time that they need to understand what you’re about, what scandium is all about, why should it be moved out of the earth.”The answer, he argued, lies in aluminum. “When you explain that it completely transform[s] aluminum and [is] strong as steel and as resistant as titanium… you can help the world reduce its GHG,” he said. Quebec already smelts more aluminum than any other North‑American jurisdiction; adding a whisper of scandium creates alloys that are lighter, corrosion‑proof and electrically conductive—attributes coveted by aerospace primes, automakers, and, increasingly, defense contractors.Such commercial promise helped persuade Naskapi Elders and youth alike that equity, not just royalties, offered the surest path to “jobs and a say in the development of a project.” “We were able to strike an initial deal for 5% of the company and we’re very, very glad,” Bourassa said, noting that the structure echoes Washington’s own decision this year to take a direct stake in MP Materials Corp. (NYSE: MP).The partnership extends beyond rocks and shares. Three years ago, Scandium Canada began working with McMaster University to design scandium‑aluminum powders for 3‑D printing. “We have now decided to put a division specifically on developing and commercialization,” Bourassa revealed, citing early demand for extrusions, welding wire and additive‑manufacturing feedstock that could underwrite a future construction decision at Crater Lake.For the Naskapi, the investment is a bet on both geology and leadership. “They haven’t just invested in an exploration company,” Hughes observed. “They’ve invested in a CEO who has a track record of taking exploration companies to production.” Bourassa, who once shepherded Nemaska Lithium from concept to construction, seemed unfazed by the parallel: “We are definitively very, very active, strongly active on this as we speak,” he said, moments after recalling the community meeting where he described scandium’s potential to “bring something good” to humanity.Whether the next milestone arrives in a boardroom, a pilot plant, or the vast spruce‑lined corridor north of Schefferville, both partners now hold an equal incentive to reach it—one share certificate at a time.

From mining Bitcoin in rural British Columbia to engineering SCIF‑rated data centers for quantum‑ready defense work, DMG Blockchain Solutions Inc. (TSXV: DMGI | OTCQB: DMGGF) has quietly emerged as Canada’s stealth contender at the crossroads of crypto and national security. “We’ve publicly stated that DMG has secured up to 10 megawatts of SCIF‑rated modular data centers,” CEO Sheldon Bennett told InvestorNews host Tracy Hughes in a recent interview. The facilities—engineered so that “people can’t read information and pick up radio waves and do all sorts of snooping”—signal DMG’s quiet leap from stalwart Bitcoin producer to supplier of secured compute power for quantum‑inflected artificial‑intelligence workloads.Formed in 2016 and public since 2018, DMG was the first Canadian Bitcoin miner to list on a stock exchange. Its early bet on vertical integration—owning data centers, developing mining software and building a carbon‑neutral ecosystem—now looks prescient as governments move to curb emissions and as Bitcoin’s halving economics squeeze inefficient operators. “We’re really focused on being able to build a Bitcoin at the lowest cost possible for a public company,” Mr. Bennett said, noting that constant uptime and disciplined overhead matter more than chasing the absolute cheapest kilowatt hour.That discipline is tested daily. On July 2, the company reported that a lightning‑sparked outage and contamination woes in its liquid‑cooled “hydro” rigs cut June output to 23 bitcoins, down from 31 in May. Realized hashrate slipped to 1.56 EH/s, but DMG still held 341 bitcoins on its balance sheet and reaffirmed a goal of 3 EH/s by year‑end 2025. “In June, we encountered several unforeseen issues with our Bitcoin mining infrastructure,” Mr. Bennett conceded in a news release, yet he portrayed the setbacks as catalysts for a broader migration to “pockets of low‑cost renewable energy” across Canada.That migration dovetails with DMG’s most ambitious product: Terra Pool, billed as the world’s first carbon‑neutral Bitcoin mining pool. “We only allow people to apply and join that are on carbon‑neutral energy,” Mr. Bennett said. The resulting coins let institutional investors “move Bitcoin in a sustainable and regulatory‑compliant manner,” a pitch that dovetails neatly with the company’s wholly owned Systemic Trust Company. “Instead of buying bitcoins from Robinhood or Coinbase where you’ll have carbon in all of your transactions,” he explained, “you can actually go to our trust and have the bitcoins moved by us.”Investors weighing a straight bitcoin ETF against DMG stock may find the miner’s economics compelling. “In general, it costs around $50,000 in power to generate a Bitcoin,” Mr. Bennett said, pointing to six‑figure spot prices and DMG’s lean cost structure. ETFs must constantly “buy and sell to rebalance,” racking up fees, whereas a miner can expand margins by upgrading hardware or tapping cheaper power. DMG’s next wave of upgrades—retiring air‑cooled rigs in favor of liquid‑cooled hydro units—should, he argued, deliver both higher efficiency and longer equipment life.All this unfolds as Washington rewrites the rulebook for digital assets. “With Donald Trump coming in, with the change in policy around digital assets, with significant U.S. banks getting more involved, I think that day [of mass adoption] is coming,” Mr. Bennett said. His own litmus test remains “the day my mom and dad will have their checking, savings or mortgage in their Bitcoin account at their local bank.”

For four decades, Kamran M. Khozan—Founder, CEO and Chairman of CVMR® Corporation—has pressed metallurgy, capital markets and public policy toward one audacious idea: emancipating critical minerals from the financing gridlock that keeps them scarce, opaque and under‑valued. CVMR, headquartered in Toronto but active in 22 countries, can refine 36 metals into ultra‑pure powders and net‑shape products; now Khozan wants to make those metals function as liquid financial assets.The mechanism arrived on July 17, when CVMR signed a Memorandum of Understanding with FINATRADES of RAMINVEST Holding, a Dubai‑ and Swiss‑based fintech platform. The partnership will lock refined metal—nickel ingots, cobalt powder, rare earth oxides, uranium—into secure vaults, tag each tranche to a cryptographic token, and let industrial buyers, sovereign funds and lenders trade or collateralize the tokens as easily as bullion. “Finally, the technology, the financial community and the mining community are at a stage where they can marry each other in developing something that has not been done before,” Khozan told InvestorNews host Tracy Hughes.Jack Lifton, Co‑Chair of the Critical Minerals Institute (CMI), captured the scale of the ambition: “This has been tried many times before, but never by a powerhouse like this.” Khozan’s definition of powerhouse is expansive. The venture aims to become “the largest critical minerals conglomerate,” spanning extraction, refinement, finance and marketing in one transparent loop. Each token will be backed one‑to‑one by physical metal certified by CVMR and listed on the FINATRADES exchange. “One of the major problems of the mining companies, especially small to medium‑sized companies, is finding finance for what they’re trying to do,” Khozan said. “This probably will solve that problem.”He argues that tokenization gives strategic elements the bankable stature long monopolized by gold. “Gold is gold, whether it’s in the ground or in your hand… Other metals do not have that status. We tried to give them that status and I think finally we have managed to do that.” The marketplace will begin with hubs in Texas, Tirana, London and Toronto; Khozan expects tighter bid‑ask spreads and fewer arbitrage opportunities. “If I’m buying cobalt, I want to know how it was mined, how it was refined, what chain of supply it went through,” he said. “This system… gives the market a stable pricing for all these metals that cannot deviate too much.”Transparency extends to taxation and human‑rights compliance—an explicit rebuke to the tax‑avoidance mystique that clings to parts of the crypto industry. “We are trying not to do that clever thing and dodge taxes,” Khozan said with a dry laugh. “Blockchain—something that is traceable—you know where the origin is. You know that these institutions… have a good human‑rights track record.” A joint working group has been formed to police compliance, product development and risk management.Africa, where CVMR already concentrates ore at the mine site, stands to benefit early. Khozan envisions refining roughly half the output in‑country, developing local engineers and tax bases, while shipping the remainder to North American facilities. “If we start slowly in those countries and refine… then bring some of it to North America, we have spread the goods,” he said. The model, he added, avoids the “straitjacket” of conditional lending by multilateral banks: “Our banking system does not impose those conditions… From inside we create jobs, we create technology, we educate.” The approach also appeals to governments eager for supply‑chain security. The partnership’s white‑paper highlights physical custody, immutable ledgers and ESG vetting as antidotes to price shocks and resource nationalism. Khozan’s invitation is open‑ended: “We can do this for the entire industry,” he said. “Whoever wants to do this is welcomed into the system and we can help them finance it, refine their metals and also market them.”

Beryllium is the metal that keeps missiles on target and fighter‑jet mirrors razor‑sharp, yet for 56 years the world has relied on a single Utah mine to get it. Rockland Resources Ltd. (CSE: RKL | OTCQB: BERLF) believes that choke‑point is untenable—and that its three new claims in Juab County can help pry open the bottleneck before demand from next‑generation weapons systems eclipses supply.Rockland President Will Rascan starts every pitch with the physics. “It’s a third lighter than aluminum, 50% stiffer than steel,” he told InvestorNews host Peter Clausi. That blend of featherweight strength underpins everything from satellite frames to neutron‑moderating reactor parts, but nearly two‑thirds of global output still comes from one berthrandite deposit at Spor Mountain, mined by Materion Corp. (NYSE: MTRN). “It’s a unique situation whereby really the U.S. is the dominant supplier,” Rascan said, “so critical‑mineral security is front and center.”Rockland’s Utah portfolio—Meteor, Beryllium Butte, and Claybank—rings Materion’s pit like a crescent moon. Beryllium Butte, first staked for lithium, coughed up assays strong enough to “bring Materion to the table,” Rascan noted. Claybank, just three kilometers northeast of the Spor Mountain mine, comes with 31 historical holes grading up to 0.6 percent BeO. “Geos are on the ground sampling as we speak,” Rascan said, with twinning and a maiden resource next on the docket.Stand inside a missile silo and look up: the inertial‑navigation gyroscopes that keep warheads on course are built on beryllium’s ghostly rigidity. The metal’s six‑times‑steel stiffness prevents warping under launch‑g forces; its blistering thermal conductivity scatters heat in optical mirrors, so images stay precise through supersonic dogfights. It fortifies X‑ray windows, guides satellites, and—in oxide form—insulates power transistors aboard probes orbiting Jupiter. Yet beryllium dust is toxic, scarring lungs; machining is done in sealed cells, respirators clamped tight. Ore still comes chiefly from Materion’s lone Utah mine and Defense Logistics Agency stockpiles. The Pentagon calls the element irreplaceable for high‑g seekers and strategic optics—“a single‑point vulnerability hiding in plain sight,” as one defense analyst put it.Rockland’s path to value runs through processing, not just drilling. “Ultimately the value is going to be in processing beryllium to a form called beryllium hydroxide,” Rascan said. To shortcut the learning curve, he raided Materion’s talent bench. Chris Dorn, an MIT‑trained metallurgist who once ran Materion’s international sales, now serves as technical consigliere. On July 9 the company added Phil Sabey, fresh from 34 years managing technology and quality at Materion’s Utah works. “Phil brings a wealth of knowledge and experience,” Rascan said in the appointment release. Sabey returned the compliment: “Rockland has positioned itself both strategically and geographically relative to the beryllium deposits presently being exploited by Materion.”Gold still glitters in Rockland’s closet—its Cole project sits in Ontario’s 20‑million‑ounce Red Lake camp—but Rascan concedes the asset needs “capital, human capital.” A spin‑out is under review so the Utah campaign won’t starve. “We feel the value is not currently being given to shareholders in its present state,” he told Clausi.For now, every corporate move points back to element 4. Flanked by ex‑Materion experts, Rascan is advancing three neighboring Utah properties—Meteor, Beryllium Butte, and Claybank—each perched in the shadow of the world’s lone major beryllium mine, he is betting that Rockland can help rewrite the supply script before the Pentagon’s next procurement cycle demands a new chapter.

Not since tungsten’s Cold War heyday has a niche metal assumed such outsized geopolitical weight, yet James “Jim” Atkinson insists that antimony’s moment has arrived—and that his small New Brunswick explorer is poised to answer Washington’s call. “Antimony is incredibly important to the U.S., not only to the military but to industries in general,” the Antimony Resources Corp. (CSE: ATMY | FSE: K8J0) chief executive told InvestorNews host Tracy Hughes. “In 2023, they imported 140,000 metric tons of antimony trioxide, and they don’t produce a single pound.”Antimony Resources, an exploration and development company devoted exclusively to the metal, is racing to fill that gap from its Bald Hill project, which sits equidistant from Fredericton, Saint John, and Sussex. Management—veterans of mine finance, discovery and operations—aims to build North America’s first standalone antimony hub at grades that dwarf foreign competitors. “The Department of Defense has said it will only buy antimony from North America,” Mr. Atkinson noted, contrasting Perpetua’s 0.4% Idaho ore with Bald Hill’s expected 4%—“ten times higher… in fact, we use 0.4% as our cutoff.”Fresh drill results underscore that boast. Hole BH-25-04 cut 7.4 meters averaging 4.17% antimony, including three massive stibnite zones assaying 28.8, 21.9, and 17.9%, while BH-25-03 returned 2.76% over 2.8 meters and a blistering 19% over 40 centimeters. “Stuff values and thicknesses like that allow you to quickly put together volumes,” he said, pointing out that a single assay from Hole 4 ranked among the top half-dozen ever reported in North America. Antimony’s visibility in core is another advantage: “When we see massive stibnite in over 70% of a hole, we suspect we’re going to get pretty good assays.”That confidence is matched by urgency as Beijing tightens its grip on supply. China, which once flooded global markets, began curbing exports last December. “I can see them cutting off all antimony exports,” Mr. Atkinson warned, calling the move “a very good economic weapon” and hinting that domestic Chinese mines—many “mom-and-pop operations”—face depletion even as local demand rises. Meanwhile, Australian concentrates still flow east for processing, underscoring North America’s dependence on foreign smelters.Against that backdrop, Bald Hill’s drills have already logged 3,100 meters with nearly 1,500 samples in the lab and more holes planned to extend mineralization beyond the known 300-meter strike. Assays should land “every three to four weeks,” Mr. Atkinson said, promising a steady news cycle through summer. He urged interested investors to watch for each batch—“Some of them will be better, some will be around the same”—and to remember the Pentagon’s peculiar demand driver: antimony trioxide, a flame retardant “apparently sprayed on every tent in the United States military.”Whether the tents or the bullets come first, the metal they rely on is scarce, strategic, and increasingly, Mr. Atkinson contends, about to be spelled Bald Hill.

Silicon, the quiet titan of modern technology, commands a market ten to fifteen times larger than rare earths, yet it still glides under mainstream investors’ radar. That paradox is precisely what drew InvestorNews host Jack Lifton to Brian Leeners, CEO and Director of Homerun Resources Inc. (TSXV: HMR | OTCQB: HMRFF), a Brazilian-based upstart determined to rewrite the global supply story for ultra-high-purity silica.Homerun styles itself as “a vertically integrated materials leader revolutionizing green energy solutions through advanced silica technologies,” and Leeners wasted no time arguing why the claim is more than marketing gloss. “We’ve really built a platform based on a core asset—our high-quality, high-purity silica in Brazil,” he told Lifton. From that platform, he explained, spring four converging businesses: purifying quartz to 99.99-plus percent; turning that feedstock into solar glass for Brazil’s booming photovoltaic market; folding the material into a Department of Energy (DoE)–backed long-duration energy-storage system; and marrying all of it with an AI-driven energy-management platform.Lifton, who began refining silicon at Westinghouse in the 1960s, conceded the company had escaped even his seasoned gaze. “I didn’t know that you existed,” he admitted, calling Homerun’s strategy “in the very top tier of vertical material industries.” The hosts’ astonishment mirrored a broader industry blind spot: while investors chase lithium and nickel headlines, semiconductor-grade silica remains overwhelmingly Chinese-controlled, a fact Leeners intends to change. “It’s going to take new techniques to change that dominance,” he said. “We’re pretty good at the creativity.”Those techniques include a collaboration with UC Davis to replace heat-hungry, carbon-heavy furnaces with “thermoelectric” purification that uses electricity to do the heavy lifting. Leeners described proof-of-concept results that already meet electronics-grade thresholds, adding that the same method can drive quartz directly to silicon metal or into silicon-graphite mixes such as silicon carbide. “If you want to be in the silicon space effectively, you’re going to need a new way to produce silicon because the Chinese dominate,” he said.Commercial scale is next. On July 9 the company disclosed a second competitive bid to build Latin America’s first dedicated solar-glass plant, a 1,000-ton-per-day facility budgeted at roughly €150 million. The German consortium GS Engineering, combining Grenzebach and Sorg, joins HORN Glass Industries AG on the shortlist. A memorandum of understanding with the municipality of Belmonte, Bahia, has already secured land and infrastructure adjacent to Homerun’s silica resource, streamlining logistics from quarry to furnace.Solar glass is more than a side project; it is the company’s margin fulcrum. “Silica is the biggest component of solar glass,” Leeners said, noting that his raw quartz can feed furnaces straight from the wash-and-sort plant—no costly pre-processing required. That purity edge, he argues, will let Homerun sell “the best quality solar glass in the world” while leveraging Brazil’s own solar-installation boom.Energy-storage ambitions run in parallel. At the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, Homerun’s sand is being engineered into “Enduring,” a long-duration thermal battery that stores electricity as heat inside silica and releases it on demand. If successful, the project could offer an alternative to lithium-ion batteries for industrial heat or grid-scale power. “Electricity in, heat stored, electricity and heat out,” Leeners summarized. The company is also exploring silicon-enhanced graphite anodes, betting that hybrid chemistries will dominate next-generation lithium-ion cells.

Silver, Frank Basa contends, is on the brink of “going ballistic,” and the veteran miner is positioning Nord Precious Metals Mining Inc. (TSXV: NTH | OTCQB: CCWOF) to catch the blast.Basa’s company operates the only permitted high-grade silver mill in Ontario’s storied Cobalt Camp, a 63-square-kilometer domain where drill results at the Castle East discovery have already outlined 7.56 million inferred ounces averaging 8,582 g/t silver. “Even Teck used to haul their rock to this plant,” Basa recalled, noting that Agnico mined 1.6 million ounces here decades ago and that the reborn facility can treat up to 3 million ounces annually.The grades, he insists, still defy modern laboratory standards. “We hit 89,000 grams a tonne—silver only,” he said of the “discovery holes” that convinced him to buy the past-producing Castle Mine a dozen years ago. A 60,000-meter drill campaign is now being re-assayed because, as Basa put it, “of the 100,000 samples, the labs couldn’t get it right—there are no standards that high.” Even without those new holes, Nord tallies roughly 250 ounces per ton in its current resource.Yet silver, in Basa’s telling, is only the opening act. The Castle rocks also host cobalt, nickel and—far from being a liability—arsenic, which Washington unexpectedly classified as a critical mineral. “Nobody’s producing it anymore,” he said. “What used to be waste is now in demand for chip substrates and, we discovered, even lithium-ion batteries.” To unlock that value, Nord spent $8 million developing Re-2Ox, a low-tech-high-sophistication hydrometallurgical circuit that has already produced cobalt sulphate “on spec for Sumitomo.” With federal and provincial coffers lining up behind industry partners, SGS is building a Re-2Ox pilot plant that will process a tonne a day before scaling to commercial throughput.A fresh trove of feedstock has just come to light. In early July, Nord’s crews completed their 68th test pit near the Castle headframe and found tailings in every hole. One trench, four meters deep and “still open,” underscores what Basa calls “new tailings discovery.” The company’s fenced compound—earmarked for a Falcon gravity concentrator and spiral circuit—sits atop the material, raising the prospect of immediate silver recovery and critical-metal extraction. “Every test pit tells a story of untapped value,” Basa said after the news release confirmed that tailings grades in earlier lab work reached 786,809 g/t in gravity concentrates.Basa keeps one eye on macroeconomics. The gold-to-silver ratio hovering near 100:1 is, he said, “something I’ve never seen in my lifetime,” and he expects a short squeeze as primary silver supply stagnates. “I don’t see gold coming down—some talk of $4,000 an ounce—so sooner or later silver will be really explosive.”Arsenic’s renaissance rounds out the thesis. “In the old days it was a penalty element,” he shrugged, “but now the Americans want it, and we might be the only hydromet plant globally that can handle this high-arsenic feed.” With three battery factories rising in Ontario—including Volkswagen’s first in Canada—Nord aims to become the camp’s twenty-first-century hub, pulling 300 tons a shift from underground veins that once ran “32 to 80 ounces a ton,” shipping gravity concentrates to Re-2Ox, and marketing both silver and critical metals to hungry supply chains.

Pat Ryan is betting that a cross-functional playbook—honed in Detroit’s auto plants and now redeployed on the Gulf Coast—can outrun Beijing’s tightening grip on rare earth know-how. “Capital is not going to get you anything unless you have the people with the expertise,” the Ucore Rare Metals Inc. (TSXV: UCU | OTCQX: UURAF) CEO told InvestorNews host Tracy Hughes, ticking off a string of recent hires: an operations veteran, a Ph.D. process-chemistry lead “who joined the team in the last two weeks,” and a project manager “who actually built an SX plant, both heavy and light.” Those additions anchor a company that—by design—intends to become, as Ryan put it, “very much an American story.”Ucore’s ambitions rest on RapidSX™, a proprietary separation technology that has already logged “over 5,000 hours” on a Kingston, Ontario, demo line and just received a show-of-faith from the Pentagon. In May, the U.S. Department of Defense expanded its Other Transaction Agreement, layering US$18.4 million atop a previous US$4 million allocation. Ryan called it “about C$38 million added to the mix,” money earmarked for an 80,800-square-foot Strategic Metals Complex in Alexandria, Louisiana, slated to start shipping separated oxides in the first half of 2026.Armed with that federal endorsement, Ucore moved quickly to thicken its own war chest. A June financing added C$15.5 million, lifting available funds to “over $50 million.” The timing, Ryan said, avoided “summer doldrums” and the market’s “China on-again, off-again” anxiety, positioning the company to pursue only “strategic equity” going forward.Location is its own hedge. Alexandria sits inside a foreign-trade zone, giving the plant tariff insulation for concentrates shipped up the Mississippi, whether from “Brazil, Australia,” or elsewhere. “Critical rares are needed,” Ryan noted, adding that the Louisiana build-out will be modular, scalable, and buffered from Gulf hurricanes yet within “good freight in, good freight out” corridors.Kingston remains the company’s laboratory—now doubled in size—where engineers are exploring “oddball” feedstocks such as samarium-rich concentrates banned from export by China.Meanwhile, the visitor log hints at downstream traction: “twenty-nine visitors” in 2024, including potential offtake partners seeking REEs for magnets and “other uses” beyond motors.Shareholders can expect, in the next quarter, an engineering schedule for Louisiana, specifics on South American and Australian supply agreements, and “three- and four-prong partnerships” linking feedstock, processing, alloying, and end users. Ryan’s view is blunt: “You don’t just (want to) have one-off transactional relationships (because they) don’t do a whole lot for building out the complete supply chain.”