u/FanOfEther

Been tracking all three and the numbers are wild. Gold's been grinding higher on central bank buying, especially China adding to reserves nearly every month. Silver had an absolutely massive run, up something like 170 percent over the back half of last year alone. Copper's the quieter story but it's up over 50 percent year over year and just hit multi month highs on tariff related stockpiling. Feels like the whole metals complex is having a moment at the same time, not just one metal.

Spent an evening this week just pulling together a rough timeline of announced reactors versus known mine expansions. Even being generous with construction schedules the fuel demand curve outpaces new mine supply by a decent margin starting around 2029. Not saying this is some big discovery, I'm sure people smarter than me have modeled this already, but seeing it laid out myself made it click in a different way than just reading someone else's summary.

Not trying to start panic just genuinely curious what the actual backup plan is. If I hold a physical coin I know exactly where it is. With a token there's a layer of trust in the platform and whatever custody arrangement backs it that I don't fully understand yet. Would like to hear from someone who actually dug into how the redemption process works in a worst case scenario.

Starting this as a running list since new deals keep popping up. Will update as more come in, drop a comment if you see one I'm missing.

• REalloys, mine to magnet chain across Saskatchewan, Greenland, and Ohio, first plant coming online soon
• NioCorp, niobium and rare earth project in Nebraska, over 500 million raised
• USA Rare Earth, building its own supply chain, recently agreed to buy a Brazilian producer
• Perpetua Resources, antimony project in Idaho backed by a 2.9 billion Export Import Bank loan

Open to more, this space is moving fast right now.

People keep saying the US needs to find more rare earth deposits, but that's not really the bottleneck. Plenty of countries have the raw ore. The actual chokepoint is processing and refining, separating the elements and turning them into usable magnet material, and China built up decades of expertise and infrastructure there that nobody else really has yet. so even when a mine opens up somewhere else, a lot of that ore still ends up getting shipped to China to get processed. That's the part the new US projects are actually trying to fix.

Mine is buying a physical piece of trinitite off a random website because I got too deep into reading about the fuel cycle one night. Sits on my desk now and I have to explain it to literally everyone who visits. Figured this sub would have some good stories, we're clearly all a little too invested in this topic mentally as well as financially.

I spread mine out pretty thin across gold, uranium, and a little cobalt. Probably not the most efficient strategy and my portfolio guy would probably laugh at me but it lets me sleep better at night not having all my eggs in one basket that I don't fully understand yet.

Not asking for financial advice just curious what people here actually think. Cobalt has all this DRC drama and refinery issues going on which seems like it could push prices one direction, but nickel has its own mess with Indonesia and their output cuts. Feels like both are messy in their own way and I can't decide which mess is more bullish for the actual price.

Spent an evening this week just pulling together a rough timeline of announced reactors versus known mine expansions. Even being generous with construction schedules the fuel demand curve outpaces new mine supply by a decent margin starting around 2029. Not saying this is some big discovery, I'm sure people smarter than me have modeled this already, but seeing it laid out myself made it click in a different way than just reading someone else's summary.

Everyone focuses on copper and uranium when data centers come up but there's a longer list of smaller markets getting squeezed too. Gallium demand tied to this buildout is apparently up double digits, and rare earth demand is climbing a few percent as well. Sounds small until you remember these are tiny global markets to begin with, so a move like that actually matters a lot more than the same percentage increase would in something like copper.

Nobody really has a clean model for how tight some of these smaller markets could get because there's never been a buildout at this scale before. Makes we wonder which of the less talked about metals ends up being the actual surprise bottleneck instead of the ones everyone's already watching.

Been thinking about tin lately, nobody talks about it but it's basically the metal that solders your entire electronics supply chain together. Indonesia controls a massive chunk of global tin exports and they've flip flopped on export policy multiple times in the last couple years, which is exactly the kind of jurisdiction risk this whole tokenized metals thing is supposed to solve for.

Semiconductor demand keeps climbing, AI hardware needs it, and there's basically no western tin production to speak of. Feels similar to where cobalt was a year ago before everyone started paying attention to DRC export halts.

Curious if metals.io or anyone else is even looking at tin as a future addition or if it's too niche.