Crypto News: A minor metal is about to have its next major moment

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This Mine Predicts Major Wars. It’s Opening Again — David Fickling

Near a windswept beach off the southern coast of Australia lies a weirdly accurate indicator of global conflict.

Sprawling over 80 hectares (200 acres) between a platypus stream and a penguin colony, the Dolphin Mine was for many years the biggest employer on King Island, a speck of 1,600 people halfway between Tasmania and the Australian mainland. The only other industries are cattle, tourism, fishing and kelp. As one of the world’s largest deposits of tungsten — a preternaturally tough metal used to harden bullets, shells and armor plating — the pit has risen and fallen through more than a century of war and peace.

First opened in 1917 to support munitions production in World War I, it shut down three years later when peace crashed the tungsten market. Starting up again in 1938 on the eve of World War II, it was saved twice more as conflict broke out first in Korea and then Vietnam. In 1990, exactly 12 months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it closed, seemingly for good. Water flooded its pit and underground tunnels, and the workers’ settlement became a ghost town.

Viewed from the perspective of 2026, this boom-and-bust cycle looks like a foolish way to have treated such a vital strategic element. With geopolitical tensions on the rise, the retrenchment of supply chains that began with the Covid-19 pandemic has turned into a global scramble to secure critical minerals such as rare earths, lithium and cobalt. As a result, tungsten increasingly looms in Washington, Brussels, Beijing and Moscow as a sort of real-life vibranium, a super-element that can determine the fate of nations as decisively as Captain America’s shield or Black Panther’s suit.

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