qfx

They call these companies “derivatives” of the gold price. Like they’re somehow sophisticated. It’s a hole in the ground, people. You dig stuff up. If the stuff is expensive, you make money. If it’s not, you don’t. They try to make it sound complex. “Enhanced upside!” they shout. As if a 50% jump in gold automatically means a 100% jump in profits. It’s never that simple. There are margins, volume… all these things they conveniently gloss over. It’s like they’re trying to distract you from the fact that it’s still just digging.

The expenditure, amounting to some $72 billion over the past two quarters, has been largely directed toward the construction of data centers – those humming, electricity-guzzling cathedrals dedicated to the worship of artificial intelligence. These aren’t investments made on a whim, naturally. They are, instead, calculated risks – a costly attempt to construct a digital moat around Microsoft’s empire, a bulwark against the rising tide of competitors and the ever-present threat of obsolescence. The price hike, therefore, isn’t merely a revenue-generating exercise; it’s an attempt to recoup those colossal expenditures, to transform silicon and electricity into shareholder value. A rather prosaic alchemy, if you ask me, but effective, nonetheless.

Meanwhile, Ripple, the company behind this whole endeavor, is doing… well. Actually, better than well. They’ve got a stablecoin, RLUSD, that’s crossed $1.6 billion in market cap. They spent over two billion dollars on acquisitions last year – a prime brokerage handling trillions. They even got a bank charter. It’s the kind of stuff that makes you wonder if the point of crypto isn’t to get rich quick, but to build a very complicated, very expensive plumbing system for banks. And my uncle? He’s still holding. He says he’s “invested for the long term.” I think he just doesn’t want to admit he was wrong about the cats, or the gas, or the future of finance.

However, a closer inspection reveals a company yet to experience the vulgarity of profit. A loss of $1.16 billion in 2025, including a particularly disheartening $452 million in the final quarter, suggests a certain…enthusiasm exceeding its means. One hesitates to apply the term ‘bubble,’ but the analogy, while crude, is not entirely inappropriate. For those of a more cautious disposition – those who prefer their investments to actually earn something – there are alternatives. Less glamorous, perhaps, but possessed of the reassuring quality of solvency.

The Mountain Pass facility, an active mine within the borders of the United States, operates as a singular node in a network of dependencies. It was, it is reported, the first to secure an accord with the government, a transaction that feels less like a partnership and more like a temporary reprieve from an undefined, yet looming, shortage. To contemplate an investment in MP Materials is to enter a system of guarantees that are, upon closer inspection, merely elaborate statements of intent.