As inflation is surging, it is putting pressure on mortgage rates. The Federal Reserve is likely to keep raising rates this year with the goal of containing consumer prices. While the Fed doesn’t control mortgage rates, its policies have an ancillary effect. 

Think Solar

At times like this, homeowners have to use every tool in the toolbox, and solar installation is a vital one to contain/reduce monthly costs.  Buying a home that has a solar energy system, or having one installed upon purchase is a savvy financial move that also benefits the environment.

Home appraisers, who review property for mortgage companies, understand that that the installation of solar panels and solar batteries can increase a property’s market value. In fact, a Zillow study indicated that homes with solar panels sold for 4.1% more than those without.

“The sale premium varies substantially by market,” reports Zillow.  “In Riverside, Calif., for example, homes with solar-energy systems sold for 2.7% more than comparable homes without solar power—a markup of $9,926 for the median-valued home in the metro. In the greater New York City metro, solar-powered homes have a premium that is double that of Riverside. At 5.4%, that’s an extra $23,989 in value for the typical home in New York. In three other coastal metro areas—Los Angeles, San Francisco and Orlando, Fla.—homes with solar power can fetch a premium of around 4%.”

Getting a solar system installed is like creating your very own power plant. Homeowners make energy right on their own property instead of relying completely on the utility company to do it for them. While you can’t disconnect completely from the grid, homeowners have the ability to generate their own power every time the sun comes up.

For homeowners paying $70 or more on electricity bills each month, there are programs available that could permanently lower electric bills up to 75% with no upfront costs.

Smart Solar Financing

According to the U.S. Office of Energy Efficiency And Renewable Energy, the average cost of solar PV panels has dropped nearly 70%. Markets for solar energy is economically competitive with conventional energy sources in most states.

A solar system is either leased or purchased. Whether you buy a system or lease it, the use of solar energy will significantly decrease monthly energy costs and increase the value of the home.

Increase Purchasing Power

An energy-efficient mortgage or green mortgage allows borrowers to finance energy-efficient improvements under advantageous loan terms. A green mortgage offers added funds with the mortgage purchase or refinance that can be applied to energy-efficient home upgrades. To qualify, applicants must meet the standard mortgage requirements of credit and debt-to-income ratio and an energy consultant develops a home energy rating report to estimate potential energy savings.

Tapping into a green mortgage can increase purchasing power and allow home buyers to qualify for a larger mortgage. And, for those people buying a home that already is energy efficient, the monthly bills will be lower.

Other ways to increase purchasing power are reducing debt, reviewing credit scores to see where any improvements can be made, and stash as much money away as you can for the down payment and closing costs and eliminate the need for mortgage insurance.

Explore First-Time Home Buyer Programs

For those who are buying their very first home, there are a variety of homebuyer assistance programs available at the national and local level. On the national level, there are Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans that are insured by the Federal Housing Administration, a government agency that sets standards for the construction and financing of homes in the United States. With a FICO® credit score at least 580, home buyers are required to put down a 3.5% down payment vs. the 20% that is industry standard.

Home buyers should also investigate their state and city level options for first-time home buyers. In New York City, for example, “the HomeFirst Down Payment Assistance Program provides qualified homebuyers with up to $100,000 toward the down payment or closing costs on a 1-4 family home, a condominium, or a cooperative in one of the five boroughs of New York City.”

Set a Budget

Before starting the housing hunt in earnest, it is important to understand how much house is affordable.  Generally, keeping housing costs to 30% or less of after-tax income is the recommendation. Getting pre-approved for the mortgage is recommended so that the house-hunt can proceed with confidence.

Consider that while mortgage rates today are on the rise, they are still relatively low on historical standards. In 1981, according to Fannie Mae data, the annual average interest rate was 16.63%! There are many benefits that come along with home ownership including tax deductions, financial stability, a permanent home and sense of belonging in the local community. 

The post Why Home Buyers Should ‘Think Solar’ in Post-Pandemic Climate appeared first on Grit Daily News.

There are at least one-and-one half billion internal combustion engine-powered motor vehicles used solely for land transportation globally today. The equivalent of 100’s of millions more of such vehicles sail the oceans and fly in the skies.

Can all of this be replaced by vehicles powered by electric motors using on-board battery storage?

The “laws” of nature are logical and experimentally “proven” and reaffirmed by computational rules, not just by observations of behavior by selected groups of human beings. Laws of nature can be replaced with improved computation rules that give results more closely aligned with observed data; Einstein’s gravitational theory has replaced Newton’s for that reason.

The “rule” of supply and demand is not a law of nature; it is an action guideline that takes into account how much human beings will give up of their time, possessions, and promises of future actions (aka, money) in order to obtain a physical good or a service. It is NOT a law of nature, but rather an observation of the most common reaction of human beings to shortages of goods and services, which human nature deems important.

Human desire may create a demand for, but it does not create a supply of natural resources. Technology, the engineering of science, is necessary for obtaining supplies of natural resources, but it is not sufficient.

The availability of natural resources for use by the human race is a function of:

1. The logistical accessibility of deposits of those resources, i.e., can they be reached by road (or rail), or ship,
2. Are they of sufficient grade (concentration) so that available mechanical and chemical engineering technologies can SELECTIVELY extract the minerals containing them and concentrate them ECONOMICALLY enough to be AFFORDABLE for intended use,
3. Is there a downstream processing regime (group pf technologies) that can economically transform the mineral concentrates produced by mining into forms necessary for mass production of the resource into an end user product or necessary part of a product?
4. Is the above regime ECONOMICAL or AFFORDABLE (e.g., the transformation of U3O8 into enriched U-235, which is only necessary if you wish to build nuclear reactors or weapons, and which would never have been affordable other than through the driver of war allowing massive “investment” in the processing regime, and, most important of all
5. The recognition that there is a grade limit below which the resource is not available to contemporary human economically deployed technology.

ALL of the deposits of natural resources, upon which human life and leisure depend, were laid over hundreds of millions and billions of years ago. Those resources are not organic; they do not grow back in mines.

The easiest deposits to work are those of the highest grade of the desired element which also have the least “contaminants” of other related elements that must be removed to purify the desired resource into a form useful to mankind.

The only factor to be considered when planning for mass producing a consumer good that requires a specific natural resource is the cost of that resource in the form necessary for the intended use. There must be a strong indication that the capital deployed to recover and process the natural resource will be repaid by the sales of the product into the general or, in the case of the military, specific, market. Capital must be repaid through wealth creation. It cannot just be wasted in a rational society, because if it is, it will eventually run out.

Note well that subsides by government are merely a way of socializing waste of capital (aka in government as “investment”). Note also that American elites always benefit from the subsidies through the ownership of the perpetually non-going concerns the losses from which are covered by the subsidies.

There is no scheme in the green universe to repay the capital; it’s use is intended to impoverish the mass of mankind to enhance and preserve a static world (fantasy) to be enjoyed only by elites.

There is NOT sufficient lithium accessible or available, economically, to replace more than a fraction of today’s transportation fleet, much less tomorrows. Deglobalization is a necessary concomitant of less availability of cheap fossil fuels. This is already happening in the guise of protecting “democracy’ from the evil scheming of those Chinese leaders who recognized the West’s propensity for cultural suicide long ago and can think of nothing better than granting the green wishes. China now has all the lithium it needs for its domestic use of reducing urban pollution. And China uses its monopoly of the necessary critical materials to dominate the global solar panel manufacturing and wind turbine industries.

Only those transportation vehicle makers who continue to make, improve, and market internal combustion engines (ICE’s) will survive the cull as electric vehicles (EV’s) get increasingly expensive and the infrastructure to support their use with power and service fails to appear. The price for lithium itself is already too high to sustain the mass production of affordable EVs. I predict that lithium prices will come down, but, of course, that will extinguish unsubsidized low-grade production, so that an ICE/EV equilibrium production will be reached, in this decade. Oil prices will also decline as production resumes, so that the energy economy recovers it normal path.

The law of supply and demand can be applied to money, but not to wealth or value. Their creation is limited by the supply of resources, productivity, and innovation.

The post Lithium, Electric Vehicles, and the Law of Resource Availability appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Copper is very much in demand now due its integral role in everything from key infrastructure to electric vehicle (EV) parts to renewable energy. As the world moves forward in the transition to clean energy, the spotlight grows on copper mining companies. The market is ripe with many inviting investing opportunities, from multinational mining conglomerates that mine for copper as well as other metals, such as BHP Group (NYSE: BHP), Vale (NYSE: VALE) and Rio Tinto Group (NYSE: RIO) or copper producer specialists such as Southern Copper Corp. (NYSE: SCCO) and Ero Copper Corp. (TSX: ERO).

Junior Mining & Copper

For investors with a stronger stomach for risk and the upside potential of significantly higher rewards, the world of copper exploration and development companies awaits. These junior mining companies are focused on exploration, development and working to get the mine(s) permitted with the goal of producing upwards of 100 million lbs. per year.  Once production surpasses that, the companies move into mid-tier or major company status.

When reviewing junior mining companies, it is important to look at the management to ensure that the leaders have a strong record of transitioning from discovery to production with other companies they have led. It is also important to assess that the team has a unique skill to navigate the mining sector in the regions they are focused on, and that the companies have substantial capital market experience and broad-based shareholder and investor support. So, before making that investment in that junior copper mining company, attend and review shareholder presentations and review the team’s credentials to make an intelligent investing decision.

As the President & CEO of a company focused on the exploration and development of copper porphyry projects in the United States and Chile, I think it is also important for investors to look at the junior copper mining company’s geopolitical ramifications of its properties looking for friendly regions, particularly South America, North America and Australia, rather than China.

“If China’s dominance of rare earth element supplies is the global energy transition’s ‘elephant in the room,’ then copper is the 800-pound gorilla,” according to the Baker Institute. President Biden has invoked the Defense Production Act to expand domestic production of critical minerals, which includes copper, should facilitate ongoing efforts of mining companies to produce geopolitically friendly copper in the United States.

By investing in copper mining companies, you are investing in the future of clean energy.  Alternatively, investors can hold copper in physical form, just like gold and silver which can be done by purchasing copper bullion bars or coins which sometimes attracts the ‘Doomsday’ crowd.  Investors can also gain exposure to the value of copper through the purchase of exchange-traded funds (ETF’s), futures or by investing in companies that mine and prospect for copper.

Copper has been used for thousands of years and faces increasing global demand with the advent of new technology, while simultaneously forecasted to experience significant declines in supply. Given its attributes, copper is often used for electrical purposes such as power transmission and generation. Like its base metal sibling nickel, it has a major role in the electric vehicle (EV) revolution, with the CRU Group expecting consumption of copper to jump five-fold by 2030 due to demand from the green energy market.

Copper is the third most consumed industrial metal in the world, behind iron ore and aluminum, as per the US Geological Survey. With copper’s starring role in the electric vehicle (EV) revolution, some analysts predict copper consumption will jump five-fold by 2030 due to green energy demands.

In November 2021, CitiBank wrote that “decarbonization will drive consumption,” and “higher prices will be needed to draw in enough copper scrap to meet longer-term demand.”

President Biden is contemplating removing tariffs on some Chinese goods to ease trade tensions between US and China, which could result in upside movement for copper. The major factors contributing to copper prices are supply and demand, economic growth, inflation, and the value of the US dollar. The bullish fundamentals for copper are driven by supply shortages and low global inventories, and its starring role in green electrification, transport and infrastructure.

Copper has been a critical metal for the global economy since the Bronze Age and its importance is only set to grow in the future. A savvy investor stands to benefit from adding some exposure to this critical metal as its growing importance begins to be realized.

The post Investing in Copper Mining Companies appeared first on Grit Daily News.

This is exactly the type of kids our world will need as tomorrow’s leaders.  But these very same kids might not be great test takers. It seems wrong to have a major determinant of who gets accepted at colleges and universities around the country to be something that keeps many talented, creative people out of those schools.

Without using a test as a significant marker for admission, colleges will be able to admit students who may not be good test takers, but who:

(1) have demonstrated that they are creative and entrepreneurial because they have started an interesting business or nonprofit or done something unusual outside of school; and

(2) have demonstrated grit by mastering something hard, whether it’s playing a sport, writing music, playing chess, or running for student government; and

(3) are the top students in their grade, even if they go to an unremarkable school in a poor neighborhood, thus ensuring that they can recruit bright, hard working kids from underrepresented communities, even if they haven’t been able to afford test preparation.

Do we really only want to admit kids who are good at taking the SAT and other admissions tests? Do we really think that Elon Musk and Steve Jobs were great test takers? My husband and I were both good test takers, and both went to elite universities. Our kids were not particularly great test takers, and yet they are both just as smart, and more creative, more interesting, and more entrepreneurial than we were.

I have a lot of respect for kids who are great test takers. They are probably also great students who learned to work hard and do what they’re asked. They will all probably do well in life; perhaps they’ll go into finance, law, medicine, or into large, established companies. I’m sure they will be appreciated by their employers and have successful careers. Of course they should be admitted. But that isn’t the only kind of student that colleges should want to admit. Colleges and universities should also want kids who think outside the box, who are going to shake the world, who will create disruptive companies and nonprofits…but who may not be great test takers.

I interviewed seventy successful entrepreneurs for my just-released book, Raising an Entrepreneur: How to Help Your Children Achieve Their Dreams; 99 Stories From Families Who Did. Some were excellent students from kindergarten on; one-third graduated in the top of their class from elite universities; and some were great test takers. Others were terrible at tests and struggled with school. Twenty percent didn’t graduate from college, largely because they wanted to work on building a company they had already started while they were still in school. And also because, for some, it wasn’t a good fit. But top colleges should also want to admit kids like them, because they are changing the world with their innovative approaches to the products and services they have created.

So I urge all colleges and universities: Drop the SAT now so you can admit more students who will change the world: create amazing companies; start incredible non-profits; will become great actors, movie directors, or songwriters; and who will champion causes that will have an impact. Most importantly, drop the SAT so you will have a diverse class. Not only diverse in terms of race and socio-economic background, but also diverse in terms of how the students think and learn – and diverse in terms of what careers they will have, what they will do with their lives, and what they will contribute to the world.

Margot Machol Bisnow is the author of Raising an Entrepreneur: How to Help Your Children Achieve Their Dreams- 99 Stories from Families Who Did.

The post Another Reason to End the SAT: It Doesn’t Help Pick Future Entrepreneurs appeared first on Grit Daily News.

We recently asked him about trading in crypto, where retail investors fit in, and what the pros know that everyone else should hear about.

Grit Daily: Would you say that trading in the crypto market is any riskier than trading in traditional markets?

David Weisberger: Potentially, but not necessarily. Crypto offers more leverage than traditional markets,
particularly in perpetual swaps and futures, but traders do not have to take advantage of that
leverage. From a counterparty risk perspective, there is no central counterparty, so that implies
more risk. That being said, the real time risk engines of crypto exchanges mean that there is
lower systematic risk, while 24 hour trading means there is more time to reduce risk when
necessary.

Grit Daily: Do you know of any strategies traders may use to reduce this risk with crypto?

David Weisberger: There is no need to use leverage to trade in crypto and even if one does want to use it, they can use the appropriate amount adjusted for the volatility of the asset. To be clear, if trading an
asset that is 3 times more volatile than the traditional assets one normally trades, then use 1/3
the leverage. Other risks in crypto include custodial risk, but that can be mitigated by using
counterparties who insure deposits and the appropriate multi-signature software for transfering
assets.

Grit Daily: Have you noticed any hesitation from institutional traders when it comes to crypto trading? Are there any ways to reduce this hesitancy?

David Weisberger: It depends on how one defines “institution.” Traditional institutional buy and sell side firms
hesitation is quite real and emanates from their compliance departments due to a lack of
regulatory clarity in the U.S. This would be mitigated if a bill such as recently put forward by
Senators Lummis and Gillibrand became law. Hedge Funds, however, are moving to trade
crypto assets at an accelerating pace.

Grit Daily: How does the platform Coinroutes provides help traders looking to get into crypto?

David Weisberger: CoinRoutes helps in multiple ways, but primarily by allowing traders to be confident in how to minimize transaction costs. Our system achieves prices superior to optimal smart routing and
provide institutional quality Transaction Cost Analysis on all the trades executed.

Grit Daily: What benefits do professional or institutional investors get from using the Coinroutes
platform? Are there any benefits for traders already experimenting with crypto?

David Weisberger: In addition to trading at lower cost per trade, the CoinRoutes system is dramatically more cost effective for firms. Instead of hiring programmers and paying datacenter and infrastructure
costs, CoinRoutes typically will offer its trading software for less money in the aggregate.
Considering that our software is the result of 15 years of developer effort and routinely
outperforms smart routing, the result is substantial net savings.

Grit Daily: Do you think now is a good time to get into crypto trading? Why or why not?

David Weisberger: As Warren Buffet says, “buy when others are fearful and sell when they are greedy.” At this point, there is substantial fear in the crypto market, but there is also a certainty among
participants that the market is here to stay. As a result, while DeFi trading via distributed
exchanges is viewed as extremely risky, there are still good opportunities for traders to
profitably implement strategies on trustworthy centralized exchanges or with well capitalized
market makers that are rapidly maturing.

Grit Daily: Do you still see a lot of potential for growth in crypto, or has it already hit its peak?

David Weisberger: Crypto is probably comparable to Internet technology in the 1990s, with the investable assets more comparable to those which existed in 2001. I say this because the actual technology to create an internet of value is in its infancy, but investment in protocols and use cases ran ahead of the technology twice already (in 2017 and 2021-22). The potential, however, is enormous in
three distinct areas:
1) Bitcoin as the base layer to transfer value seamlessly on a global basis. While individual
transactions will likely use networks (such as Lightning) built on top of Bitcoin, the base
layer is likely to be THE store of value for the digital world. Despite prices sinking, the
adoption metrics have been improving.
2) DeFi as disruptive technology to introduce competition and efficiency to financing
businesses globally. Much of today’s DeFi is based on regulatory or tax arbitrage and
the protocols & businesses are immature, but there is substantial promise for the
technology.
3) Web3 including NFTs and individuals retaining control and value of their own data and
application usage. This is a very broad topic, but I will use one example to illustrate.
Consider the immense value created by open source software. Most of that was done
without compensation to developers, so imagine what could be created with financial
incentives built into the process. Similarly, consider the potential if all creators had the
means to earn value directly without paying intermediaries…

The post David Weisberger, CEO of CoinRoutes, Explains How Crypto Traders Reduce Their Risk appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Yet, some critics and members of the public subscribe to perceptions about the value of NFTs. The majority remain unconvinced by the decentralized finance argument, while business leaders hedge their bets on the side of change. A prime example is Facebook recently renaming itself to Meta to signal the development and integration of metaverse technologies.

Sports is a culture and community embedded in tradition. Rules are sacred, and convention dictates debates across the world. It seems surprising that they would become a hotbed for one of the most potentially subversive shifts the digital age has seen. But key players and industry upstarts are already looking to carve their names in the sports technology history books.

What’s the history between tennis and Web3?

Tennis is a sport that has already seen its fair share of NFT projects. The US and French Opens have launched tokens this year to mixed results. While utilization of the blockchain is welcomed, adoption by large organizations often only serves to feed FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) in the NFT community. The common denominator among tennis-based tokens to date is the pure aesthetic value on offer. Web3 advocates today are more demanding of utility in NFT offerings, so FUD has only grown.

Planned for launch during the 2022 Wimbledon Championships, 15 Love is a project and launch pad moving into the next evolutionary stage of development that could intrigue tennis and NFT enthusiasts. Co-founders Sabrina and Kyle Stocker plan to attach long-term utility to their tokens with the aim of creating the home for tennis and NFT fans in the metaverse.

Where does 15 Love fit into the current conversation?

Other tennis NFT projects, such as the planned Centenary Collection, have been directed by people with a minor association with the community at hand. While it celebrates 100 years of Wimbledon’s Centre Court, the aforementioned is being created by Glorious Digital, a New Zealand art studio that has worked with artists and musicians.

However, it is thought the Stockers’ project is beginning to grab headlines due to its resemblance to the conceived purpose of Web3. Kyle Stocker is an ITF-ranked tennis player, while Sabrina founded a company that became the UK’s largest tennis events company.

Web3 is now a trillion-dollar industry, and several leading tennis players have started to show an interest in the medium, including Andy Murray, Serena Williams, Stan Wawrinka, and Rafael Nadal. “Web3 will revolutionize the world of Tennis, and 15 Love will be at the heart of it,” co-founder Sabrina Stocker stated.

What do purchasers receive? 

The NFT project and launch pad will include uniquely designed tennis racquets with different rarities and utilities. One element of the project will be its tennis ambassadors, a range of players, legends, and experts that the community can meet. 

“Tennis needs a forum where its worldwide community can meet and learn together,” Stocker said. “Almost every top player is involved with social media; the same will be true for Web3 in two-to-three years. Now is a great time to get involved. We are getting in early, and many people could risk missing out”.

Companies like TennisTV have dominated in the Web2 era in tennis. But with Web3 looking like the present and future, tennis fans are demanding wide use of the technology more than ever. 15 Love looks to fill that gap to provide fans with a broader experience.

How does it plan to take off?

Sabrina Stocker has well-placed experience as the CEO of Metaverse Media and nearly two decades of involvement with tennis as a player, coach, and events entrepreneur in the USA and the UK. In addition, she was a candidate on BBC’s The Apprentice, reaching the Final Five in 2018. 

Since then, she has been featured in Forbes, has built a following of 50,000 on social media, and was the youngest Top 10 Female Entrepreneur named by Apple News. She now has over 40 staff to help 15 Love reach its full potential, mainly involved in tennis, marketing, the metaverse, and NFTs.

The separating factor between the Stockers’ project and others in the tennis space seems to be its community connection and public relations know-how. Its success could determine how all future sports NFTs are conceived. The community simply needs to be won over by its utility.

The post Can Utility Based NFTs Such As 15 Love Change Sports Forever ? appeared first on Grit Daily News.

With every bull market, however, there are bear prognosticators who bet on the price of lithium to decline with the market heading into balance or even over-supply.  As a battery metals veteran, my viewpoint of “hold your horses, Wall Street” is echoed by many lithium analysts and experts who believe that battery metal market fundamentals shed light on a variety of pressing reasons why a lithium surplus marketplace with dramatically reduced prices is not on the horizon.

Industry veterans are joined by a number of analysts and other experts, including Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a leading research firm that covers green energy minerals.  Its recent report titled, “Lithium oversupply?  Not likely – five main reasons why” offers a convincing rebuttal to the flawed thesis that lithium supplies are, in fact, elastic.

How Fast Can Miners Move from Discovery to Production?

What lithium ‘bears’ do not understand is that while lithium may be present in a number of different forms globally, the processes involved in economically extracting and producing battery-grade lithium are extremely challenging. It can take up to a decade to discover a deposit, develop it, build a mine and extract and refine battery grade lithium. Even in China, where permitting is typically easier and lithium production is often fast-tracked, this is proving to be the case.

The process of turning lithium into the chemicals that power batteries is not easy.  Also, refining raw lithium into high-purity lithium carbonite, which is of sufficient quality for batteries, involves complicated metallurgical processing methods and is very time consuming.  

Ensuring Environmental Responsibility

While the production of the lightweight metal lithium is essential to technology to drive the shift to the new clean energy paradigm, certain processes associated with some forms of lithium production or refining are environmentally damaging.  In addition, with the primary sources of lithium being hard rock deposits and salar brines, lithium processing through conventional methods such as evaporation ponds are inefficient, with lithium extraction rates often less than 50%.

Pollution, significant high-water usage and land use permitting are other challenges that lithium miners face.  So, as EV makers are looking for long-term lithium suppliers, they should be mindful to ensure that their upstream suppliers are committed to environmentally sustainable mining practices. This is already happening, with some EV makers actively seeking out sustainable lithium miners.  However, with the domination of China in the global supply of refined battery products, including lithium, it’s not always possible to ensure best environmental practices are being adopted. Not only is it critically important that we develop domestic lithium supplies in North America, but also that we put sustainability and environmental best practices to the fore.

Fortunately, two major organizations, Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance and Responsible Minerals Initiative, have established the necessary guidelines to act as a gold standard for all sustainably mined materials.

Is Low Quality Chinese Lithium a Global Supply Fix?

Some lithium ‘bears’ point to China to account for a future oversupply of lithium.  Benchmark Mineral Intelligence is emphatic that China cannot ramp-up output significantly to create an over-supply. Here’s the crux of Benchmark’s argument as stated in its lithium report. “Known domestic Chinese spodumene and other hard-rock resources are low quality, a key reason why there has been an increasing reliance by Chinese converters on Australia for supply instead. China’s deposits of lepidolite may have the potential to help bridge the deficit in coming years, but are unlikely to lead to oversupply.”

According to Benchmark, “the lithium market will start to balance over the next few years” but believes it is unlikely that “marginal, unconventional feedstock will fill the deficit” and “unlikely that demand will weaken significantly.”

Benchmark’s view on spot prices for lithium concludes that, “end-users can only absorb so much cost pass through before it has an unsustainable impact on their electric vehicle ambitions.  However, the spot market price in China does not represent the true price of lithium in the market, and is often not the true price being paid by western battery majors. In these markets we expect to see a gradual ramp up in contract deals being settled with increasingly flexible, and more frequent, pricing mechanisms.”

Upstream Investment in Mining is Vital to Meet Rising Demand

It is important to encourage upstream investment in mining; particularly as there is still not enough upstream investment to meet current and future demands for lithium.  Some financial analysts predict global demand of 1.2 million metric tons of lithium carbonite by 2025, but the reality is that even this level of demand growth is likely to be well off the mark.  To my mind, the better way to measure the true pulse of the marketplace and what packs the most punch are the announcements from major lithium producers with Albemarle and Ganfeng Lithium each expecting demand of around 1.5 to 1.6 million metric tons of lithium carbonate in the same time-frame.

As for American Lithium, we are focused on aiding the shift to the new energy paradigm through the continued development of our TLC lithium claystone project in the richly mineralized Esmeralda lithium district in Nevada, which is within three hours’ drive of the Tesla giga-factory. We are also continuing to advance our high-purity, hard-rock Falchani lithium  project in southeastern Peru. This project has demonstrated the ability to precipitate battery-grade lithium carbonate without the need for additional refining. A robust preliminary economic assessment, that was published in 2020 and is now being upgraded, also suggest the prospect of low-operating costs.

All of this speaks to the fact that American Lithium intends to be a key part of upstream lithium development in the Americas.

Lithium Whisperer is the Marketplace

It is important to listen to the market place to gauge lithium supply status.  Consider the following statistics.  First of all, global EV sales doubled in February 2022 reports Inside EVs on April 6, 2022.  Or that the spot price of one metric ton of lithium carbonate (LCE) rose from $6,750 in September 2000 to a recent high of $78,000 USD. By 2025, automakers will have spent $365 billion USD building EV and HEV production facilities, reports Bloomberg Energy Finance.

As lithium scarcity grows, BloombergNEF forecasts prices of lithium carbonate and hydroxide — the main lithium chemicals used in battery production — to continue to go skyward until 2030 due to anticipated supply deficits.

“As the market wrestles between long-term supply security to fuel the lithium-ion economy, and increasingly market-led pricing mechanisms to incentivize supply growth, the era of lithium market volatility is likely just beginning,” Benchmark surmises.

Mission Critical: Urgency for ‘Made in America’ Lithium

The quest for EV manufacturers, (as well as other industrial and military users,) to secure access to high grade lithium is intense. So, too, is the need to ensure supply chain security.  To this end, the United States and other countries are looking to untangle their clean energy supply chains from China which is currently the leading producer of lithium-ion batteries.

As such, there is an urgency to secure long-term supplies from geopolitically-safe, lithium-rich countries such as the United States, Canada, and Peru. The conflict in Ukraine is a stark reminder of what happens when the supply of energy and other critical commodities is “in the hands” of unstable or unfriendly regimes. Accordingly, the US has a heightened need to source as much sustainable, “home-made” lithium and other critical minerals as quickly as possible, particularly given the fact that lithium mining in the US is currently estimated to account for less than 1% of the lithium mined annually across the world.

The post Lithium Oversupply?  Hold Your Horses appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Back on May 25, Andressen Horowitz doubled down on blockchain when it announced the raising of a $4.5 billion crypto fund. The move took place amid a crash that had resulted in many investors fleeing the crypto market. The fund, which doubled the size of the firm’s latest fund, also followed the announcement of a new crypto research team back in April. Arianna Simpson, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, referred to the fund’s motivation by telling CNBC:

“Bear markets are often when the best opportunities come about when people are actually able to focus on building technology rather than getting distracted by short-term price activity.”

While the firm’s move has been one of the most significant news of the past month, many other organizations are investing heavily in crypto startups. This has been especially true when it comes to big players in the space, with companies like Binance and KuCoin forming their own investment and incubation programs. 

Binance Labs raised $500 million earlier this month to “boost blockchain, Web3, and value-building technologies” with participation from DST Global Partners and Breyer Capital. KuCoin, on the other hand, raised $150 million back in May during a funding round to expand its trading services with the mission “to support the growth of Web 3.0 and the crypto markets.”

With the crypto market capitalization going under the $1 trillion mark, Venture Capitalists have certainly taken a more measured approach when investing in crypto startups. However, as seen during Consensus 2022, most of them remain optimistic about crypto adoption and the future of blockchain, crypto, and Web3.

Xinlu YU, Head of KuCoin Labs; Jason Urban, Co-Head Galaxy Digital Trading at Galaxy Digital; and Stefan Rust, Founder of Laguna joined Grit Daily House as part of Consensus 2022. During the event, they sat with Linqto’s Chief Strategy Officer Karim Nurani to talk all about Crypto Investment Trends in 2022.

If you missed the chance to attend Grit Daily House in person and want to hear what these experts in the DeFi, Venture Capitalism, and crypto incubating industries have to say about crypto investment trends, worry not. You will be able to watch the panel in the video below and find our other panels on Grit Daily’s official YouTube Channel.

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As reported by The Wall Street Journal, new lithium extraction technologies are attracting attention as these “methods “could help increase supplies, while attracting investors for their potential to speed up production and reduce the environmental impact compared with most current lithium-extraction methods, but none are, so far, proven at commercial scale.”

How is Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) defined?

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) states: “DLE technologies can be broadly grouped into three main categories: absorption using porous materials that enable lithium bonding, ion exchange, and solvent extraction.

Scaling up any of these techniques to full production capability remains a challenging task. For example, developing a solid material that bonds with just lithium is a huge challenge in geothermal brine that contains many minerals and metals at high temperatures and pressures. Successful DLE implementation will depend on expanding innovation and creating new technologies.”

“It’s such a game changer. There are huge opportunities,” U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told an energy conference in April 2022 about DLE.

In March 2022, One World Lithium announced the signing a licensing agreement with the US Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory division for a patent developed by the NETL for selectively recovering lithium from solutions of mixed metallic ions.

The DOE patent is an advanced direct lithium extraction (DLE) process for the extraction of lithium from natural brines, rapidly generating a pure lithium carbonate. The method uses unique carbon dioxide injection mixing techniques to quantitatively precipitate lithium carbonate from brines. This process requires no solvent, electrodes, membranes, or sorbents, but only uses carbon dioxide which can be sourced from industrial sources, waste or exhaust gas streams or, even, ambient air. It significantly reduces capital and operating costs, process time, energy requirements, and, paradoxically, overall carbon dioxide emissions.

The process can be fully deployable and operational at the brine source, eliminating the need to evaporate the brines and/or transport brine concentrates to a chemical processing facility to form and purify lithium carbonate. Deployment of this technology will reduce dependence on foreign lithium sources.

Many DLE Technologies Tap Significant Water Supplies

A major automobile manufacturer is relying on DLE technology to supply a lithium from the Salton Sea region of California. which purportedly “uses 10 tonnes of water for every tonne of lithium produced.”

By way of background,most of thelithium extraction processes use a lot of water —approximately 500,000 gallons per metric ton of lithium produced. Mining can consume the majority of a region’s fresh water, which negatively impacts the community and reduces the number of locations that are feasible. Lithium extraction technologies also have the potential for toxic chemicals to leak from the evaporation pools, or membrane filters, into the water supply. This includes hydrochloric acid, which may be created in the processing of lithium, and waste products that are filtered out of the brine.

While current extraction methods yield about 40% to 50% of the lithium present in a mined or brine resource, processes using DLE can extract 75% to 90%.

As The Wall Street Journal reported “many DLE technologies that work well in the laboratory often run into trouble in the field. Many of the technologies would likely still require large amounts of water and power to run the devices on a large scale.”

One World Lithium Inc.’s license agreement with the US Department of Energy and its National Energy Technology Laboratories (NETL) is focused on profitably separating high-purity lithium carbonate from a brine. The DOE patent is an advanced direct lithium extraction (DLE) process for the extraction of lithium from natural brines, rapidly generating a pure lithium carbonate. The method uses a unique multi-step high pressure/temperature application of carbon dioxide injection-mixing to ultimately directly and selectively precipitate lithium carbonate from brines. One World’s DLE technology competes favorably vs. competitors as:

• The process requires no solvent, electrodes, membrane, or sorbents and only uses carbon dioxide which can be sourced commercially or from industrial waste streams or ambient air.

• It significantly reduces capital and operation costs, process time, energy requirements, and, paradoxically, overall carbon dioxide emissions.

• The process can be fully operational at the brine source, eliminating transportation of brine derived solids to a chemical processing facility to form pure lithium carbonate. Deployment of this technology will reduce dependence on foreign lithium sources.

The stakes are high for DLE to be successful. The US Energy Department reports that at least 70% of U.S. lithium deposits are held in brine reserves. DLE could produce lithium in areas where open-pit mines face strong opposition. If a successful DLE technology is created, miners will increase global lithium production with a footprint significantly smaller than evaporation ponds or open-pit mines.

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So why are public pension funds – some supported by taxpayer dollars – investing in these instruments of economic destruction?

Research indicates that state pension funds have invested in activist hedge funds. Public records show that New Jersey’s pension fund has investments in the activist fund’s Starboard Value and Jana Partners. Florida’s pension fund also has invested in Starboard Value.

Governor Ron DeSantis, in his role as chair of the pension fund, makes him a Wall Street player of sorts. His recent comments about Elon Musk’s buyout of Twitter were followed by Musk’s sudden, and not necessarily coincidental, conversion to the Republican Party.

Even nonprofit foundations established to benefit society are lending support to these predatory activist investors. Are the Ford Family Foundation, the Dr. Scholl Foundation, and the Edward & Sandra Meyer Foundation aware of what’s being done with their money?

When an activist hedge fund pounces on a company, the result tends to be disastrous for everyone but the activists: poor long-term returns for shareholders and a loss of jobs for employees.

Activist Hedge Funds – Billionaires’ Delight

The activist sales pitch seems compelling at first. Replacing an apparently lackluster board with new thinking – and lighting a fire under management – may seem like a good way to boost shareholder value.

But it’s increasingly clear that activist hedge funds are the successors to leveraged buyout specialists of a generation ago: quick-buck seekers operating out of their own, usually short-term interest. So when a prominent activist hedge fund like Starboard Value goes after a dizzying array of companies in a matter of months – including Huntsman, GoDaddy, Papa John’s, Commvault Systems, Kohls, LivePerson, eHealth, On Semiconductor, ACI Worldwide, Aecom, Cerner, Elanco Animal Health, Merit Medical Systems, Onyx Acquisition, and Warburg Pincus Capital   – alarm bells should be ringing for their shareholders and employees.

It’s no coincidence that some of the largest activist funds are run by multi-billionaires: Carl Icahn of Icahn Capital Management (net worth $16.7 billion in mid-May 2022, according to Forbes), Paul Singer at Elliott Management ($4.3 billion), Daniel Loeb of Third Point ($4.2 billion) and Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management ($2.9 billion).

Activist investors seek to turn a fast profit. Their strategy is the polar opposite of the long-term commitment it takes to build a thriving company with a healthy culture that serves customers, employees, shareholders, and all other stakeholders.

For these billionaires, the quickest path to a short-term windfall comes from slashing costs to attract a company’s sale. That’s bad for three reasons.

First, selling the company to a competitor or a private equity firm isn’t always in the best interests of employees are customers, who lose access to competing providers of goods and services. And it rarely serves the country’s need for dynamic markets that foster innovation and entrepreneurial energy.

Second, drastic cost-cutting usually means layoffs and corner-cutting that lowers employee morale and customer satisfaction. Cost-cutting can also mean abandoning ongoing investments in new products or markets that have yet to bear fruit but are essential for the company’s long-term prospects. In fact, one study showed that the average company taken over by activists suffers a 50% drop in research & development spending during the time the hedge fund is in charge.

Third, a recent study also showed that companies targeted by activist hedge funds tend to be poor corporate citizens, finding that “as soon as an activist hedge fund takes ownership of a company’s shares, the company is likely to firmly place on hold their efforts to be more environmentally sustainable and socially responsible.”

The bottom line is that shareholders don’t do well, either. The same study found that after a short-term uptick in company value, “the value of the companies targeted by activist hedge funds steadily drops [and continues] downwards five years after targeting.”

That’s why it’s troubling that state pension funds and some philanthropic nonprofits support these activities. Does Gov. DeSantis really think his populist image will be helped by associating with activist funds that lay off workers and handicap companies?

Short-term benefits for billionaires, long-term losses for employees, shareholders, and society. Seems like a very raw deal.

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