This transcript was automatically generated.

0:00:02 – Announcer

Wall Street Unplugged looks beyond the regular headlines heard on mainstream financial media to bring you unscripted interviews and breaking commentary direct from Wall Street right to you on Main Street.

0:00:16 – Frank Curzio

How’s it going out there? It’s June 19th and I’m Frank Curzio, host of the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, where I break the headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets.

So I told you I was going to be doing more interviews on Wall Street Unplugged and I used to do a ton of them, as you know. So I had this podcast for 15 years yes, I’m that old, everybody has podcasts these days and I probably interviewed most of the analysts you see on CBC, on Fox, business heads of states, leading doctors, economists, scientists, analysts across all industries. And I really wanted to get back to that, because when I’m interviewing someone and learning, I mean it’s incredibly powerful and I love interviewing even people who have different opinion than me. But it was such a valuable part of this podcast and I guess we got kind of busy and focusing on just the fundamentals and really getting into the markets and stuff like that. But again, when it comes to interviews, it’s where I learned the most. I feel our interviews are good because we let people talk, we do them for a certain amount of time. It could be 30 minutes, it could be 20 minutes, it could be 45 minutes, it could be 20 minutes, it could be 45 minutes and I’ll gauge that based on how entertaining it is and I feel like the interviews we see today. We don’t get that On CNBC. I love Squawk Box because at least they let some of the guys talk there that I want the hedge fund managers, the Einhorns and the Icahns and stuff like that. I want to hear those guys all day but yet they’re on for like a minute here, two minutes there, three minutes there sometimes and I want to hear more. So I learned a lot from these interviews. It’s been a big part of my experience with this podcast and why it’s been around 15 years and we’re going to get back to that start producing a lot more. I just want to let you guys know.

So, really looking forward to this interview coming up, it’s with a friend of mine, luke Norman, who’s the executive chairman and co-founder of a company called US Gold Corp. It’s a name I’ve followed for a while. As you know, I’m a boots to the ground analyst. I actually flew down Wyoming to see their signature project called Copper King and they just got some incredible news on the company, which is an approved permit which changes the entire landscape of the company. Right Now you become like a junior miner to now. You know this is going to be developed, this mining project. Right now it’s raising money to develop. It’s not raising money to drill more to see if we got something. They have something. They got the permit in Wyoming. This is a 20-year process. Sometimes this takes, and that’s why the mining industry kind of sucks, and to see them get this permit the stock popped on the news as well off its lows. Really really good times for them.

But it’s not just a conversation about US Gold Corp. We’re going to really dig into what moves the gold markets. We’re going to talk about he’s from Vancouver and how terrible it’s been and I want to talk about sentiment. What’s going on there make it more exciting. I used to plan three trips in Vancouver a year at least and I haven’t been there since pre-COVID. It just hasn’t been an exciting sector. I haven’t found lots of ideas and I have so many great contacts where a Curzio One membership we get into private placements. I mean I could have gotten to 150, 300 private placements. Everybody was looking to raise money but it wasn’t a good deal, not where gold and silver was and wasn’t exciting. And now you see the landscape change. So we’re going to really dig into that part. We’re going to talk about Bitcoin as well.

Copper this is a copper project gold and copper project and also really important. Here, guys, we’re going to talk about energy demand when it comes to data centers and how that’s going to impact copper. I want you to listen to this part, because most people are significantly underestimating the massive demand for power that we’re going to need to create over the next five to 10 years. I know you read stories and they say, oh, this demand is coming in the Google search, all this stuff, and how much AI requires like 10 or 15 times the power compared to Google search. We hear the stats I’ve been talking about stats, but we don’t have the infrastructure in place and I don’t know if you heard yet.

The whole world is all in on AI. Nvidia is now the largest company in the world based on market cap. It just surpassed Microsoft. I thought it was Apple and Apple hit that, I think, a week ago, a week and a half ago. Now it’s NVIDIA, and NVIDIA is going to stay there because you’re just seeing this massive demand and we’re not ready for it from the energy landscape and there’s a lot of money to be made in that we’re going to have a great conversation about that, so definitely listen up and, without further ado, here’s my interview with Luke Norman. Luke Norman what’s going on? How’s everything?

0:04:28 – Luke Norman

Great, thank you. Thanks for having me, Frank.

0:04:30 – Frank Curzio

I know it’s been a while right. So Luke is the executive chairman, also co-founder, of US Gold Corp, a company that we have in our portfolio. Recent good news on the company. You’ve got to give us an update. But before we go there, I want to talk about how are things on your end in Vancouver. I haven’t spoke to you a while. I haven’t been to Vancouver, probably in three years, maybe four years now. It’s just, you know, covid was a little crazy. I haven’t got a chance to get back there, but now gold’s on fire, mining’s on fire, I might make my way down there. What’s the sentiment?

0:05:10 – Luke Norman

I mean, with gold hot, you got silver doing well, copper a little bit off its highs, but still doing well. What’s it setting around vancouver, which is the mining capital of the world? It’s gone from bearish to resilience. I mean, look, seriously Frank, it’s one of the most uh, I don’t know out of sync marketplaces I have definitely I’ve ever witnessed. You have got, as said, gold prices at all-time highs, copper touching record highs, silver in a boom, and the equities are just not translating over to it.

So I don’t see this as a permanent issue. I think it’s just a bit of inelasticity that’s going to be stretched beyond its limits and it’s going to break and that resilience that I’m referring to. In terms of what I’m feeling and seeing around Vancouver, I have a lot of positivity. The good thing about a bear cycle leading into a bull cycle is we’ve flushed a lot of the garbage out, drained the swamp, as I think one of your favorite politicians likes to refer to. So, look, things are bullish, but we are not quite seeing those inflows. Hey, look, that’s a great opportunity, though, for investors.

0:06:18 – Frank Curzio

Now why would you say not see those inflows? I mean, we’ve seen a lot of craziness. We’ve seen craziness with warrants and we’ve seen I think it was such a bear market for such a long time. And I think what was frustrating investors is we were told that higher inflation gold is great for high inflationary environments. It didn’t really happen and we’re finally seeing it now. But just 2022, 2023, inflation is through the roof. Deficits again just out of control almost every place. Just the reasons that we were told such a long time would drive gold prices. It took so long until this year to really drive them, but that period for such a long time.

I think what really separates the good from the crap is how you manage your business. I love what you did. You said you did risk the project, right, and a lot of people just you’re a junior miner, you’re not making any money, right. So what are you doing? I think the financing options of three five-year warrants and you do them over and over again I’ve seen some companies they’ve really carried away with dilution is insane. So they’re looking at their stocks saying how come it’s not higher when their market high because of dilution? I mean, you’re not in that case with US gold. But are you seeing that kind of separation? Where is it money around to fund these projects? Because now prices have moved up maybe not to 52-week highs like gold and silver, but it seems like an opportunity for the really good projects, even like yours, to get further funding to build out.

0:07:39 – Luke Norman

Look, firstly, I mean that was a pretty big question there, a lot of information. You could have summed up the front end with just it’s a fiat currency. Then I’ll reuse inelastic. There’s this inelastic separation in my point of view and a lot of people’s point of view that monetary inflation that we’re all witnessing hey, not just some house prices, which I know are correcting, so I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole but that massive gap between the amount of dollars that have been generated, which is generating inflation, and the price of gold and the price of other commodities, but gold in particular. So that is not going to last forever. So that is not going to last forever.

And just as this inequality I guess for want of a better word between the price of gold and the, there will be inflows of capital from other sectors into the mining space. That’s what we’ve witnessed every other secular bull market, the biggest being, of course, from about 2000 through to 2011. When the money starts flowing into the sector, it needs to be deployed and it’s a very, very small industry relative to tech or any of the other industries out there oil and gas. So you wait for that capital to show up. When it does, it’s pouring into the very few quality names. Take us, for instance, one of the only US domiciled listed project companies in the entire industry. When the money flows, it’ll flow into the right name. So we’re in this bull market.

The capital just hasn’t started flowing into the sector yet.

0:09:36 – Frank Curzio

Now I want to talk about. First of all, let’s go with Guala. I want to get your thoughts. And again, it’s a different perspective because you’re in Vancouver and everything’s mining right, so most of it’s mining. And from the US it’s a different perspective because you’re in Vancouver and everything’s mining right, so most of it’s mining. And from the US it might be a little different, because everything seems to be working right, especially technology and AI and all that stuff. But have you felt over the past four or five years that that Bitcoin has stolen gold’s thunder? I mean the new generation growing up?

0:10:03 – Luke Norman

Have I felt or have I just literally witnessed it?

0:10:06 – Frank Curzio

have you witnessed it? What are you hearing? Even you know, I said a younger generation. I’m a little bit over 50 now, but anyone like you know 40, 45 grew up in a digital world. Right and going forward, it’s going to get worse and worse, right you get the old people that are, you know, get younger people get older it’s an old man’s point of view.

All right, it’s an old man’s right yep, the doug casey’s out there, the rick rules that we listen to, right, I mean all these people, all these brilliant minds and stuff like that, but it used to be the, you know, the store of value and you should own this because of high deficits and, and I feel like, especially from an inflation point of view, where, uh, are you seeing younger people that, and even younger entrepreneurs that have mining companies? Are they getting into bitcoin? Does it seem like that capital is either Bitcoin or gold, because I never understood why it has to be either or when it could be both.

0:10:51 – Luke Norman

How about I use an anecdotal example to answer that again very, very kind of detailed question? One of our largest shareholders is the largest crypto miner on the planet, an individual who’s put together the three largest crypto miners on the planet. His view is if you’re invested in crypto, you should own gold, the days of gold being again all right, let’s break this up. Firstly, you pointed out you’re 50 years of age. Well, the US dollar, as a reserve currency, just had its 52nd birthday, Frank, you know, it’s relatively young to the 5,000 years of gold having true value. But okay, let’s ignore that, because the old view was gold, guns and ammo. Right, you want a bunker, because the whole world’s going to break down and we need gold, guns and ammo. Right, you want a bunker, because the whole world’s going to break down and we need gold as that final currency. I don’t ever see the day that you and I will be walking into a store with fractions of gold to pay for groceries or to try and keep the lights on at the house, right, and I think that was the archaic view that was carried over into the last 50 years of gold, and that’s why there’s been such a separation between the younger generation. And now so again. My anecdotal example an individual who’s in charge of the largest crypto miner on the planet, one of and started the other two. He’s of firm belief that, to back up their digital currency ownership, that the younger generation should have gold, and it’s purely a hedge against monetary inflation, against these fiat currencies.

We’re witnessing the US dollar losing its reserve currency status. I just watched a really interesting Tucker Carlson episode the other day. He had Congressman Macy. I recommend your viewers, your listeners, to I didn’t see that one yet. Yeah, it’s well worth a watch and a listen because they talk about that separation that’s going on. The BRICS are letting go of the US dollar as a reserve currency, as a trading currency. There’s a lot of change going on and, don’t forget, the BRICS are also talking about their own internal trading currency that’s gold-backed, or maybe gold and copper-backed. Hey, look, either way, gold is going to come back into the forefront and younger investors are going to be offered the opportunity to own and have a better representation of ownership in gold.

0:13:31 – Frank Curzio

Now let’s turn a page to copper. Your biggest project is called Copper Mountain, so copper is a lot different from gold, where gold is driven by numerous factors. I mean copper is driven by supply and demand and you’re seeing prices again at about 10% off record highs well over $5, $5.50, whatever they want Still doing incredibly well. But it’s crazy that you’re seeing copper prices go higher and the demand’s coming from other places, not just hey, china, it was China, it was China. It’s not really coming from China. It seems like this global picture of demand for copper I mean, what do you see in that industry? Because this is significant for your project and for your company.

0:14:15 – Luke Norman

Look again, that was one of the key discussions I just had with said individual that I’ve been referring to and I’m sure at some point I’d like to and, uh, you know, I’m sure at some point I’d like to talk to you about, maybe you’re having him on your podcast very interesting individual. Um, but we were just having this conversation the other day that the old benchmark, you know, of just chinese growth, uh, leading demand, because it was 51 percent of copper demand globally is out the window, especially in the us. It’s now a critical mineral in the US and the reason why, okay, electric vehicles. Well, not just the vehicles themselves, but the transmission of electricity along the highways networks. That’s a huge amount of demand.

Oh wait, but where’s the electricity coming on from the transformers et cetera within that transmission? Then the biggest one by far, the elephant in the room and you and I have discussed this before, Frank is AI and the demands on energy that AI is bringing. And this is happening real time, like instantaneously. We’re looking at the next couple of years. We are at a hyperbolic kind of curve of change in terms of what AI is going to represent and have effect in our lives. Well, those big service centers they require okay, just an AI search versus a Google search is requiring 10 times the computation, so 10 times the energy.

So the demand for copper is exponential and it’s here and I just heard another really interesting statistic the other day from the CFO over at Rio Tinto that the last hard rock mine to be permitted, copper mine to be permitted in the US these are his words, not mine was in 2008. You know and they’ve been following, trying to get resolution their big copper deposit that they joint venture with I forget who the JV partner is sorry 18 years in development. Well, I’ve got a pure copper gold project sitting right in Wyoming, an hour and a half drive from Denver International Airport, right in a major hub of employment that I just got a permit on. So look, I know that was a bit of a sneaky segue there into US Gold Corp, but I think that this copper demand is a very real, not thing, but issue. I think that copper prices.

There’s another interesting video I recommend your viewers take a look at. It’s one of those little CNBC snippets that you find on YouTube, and the name of it was why Copper Demand is Skyrocketing, or Another one was why is copper the new gold? Well worth a look.

0:17:11 – Frank Curzio

That’s great. I saw that project with you. I flew down. It was amazing. It’s the reason why I recommend the stock doing boots on the ground and stuff like that. By the way, we usually hang out. It used to be at least once twice a year. I got to get to Vancouver and hang out with one of be. At least once twice a year again, I gotta get to vancouver and hang out with all my buddies and you’d rather come to florida I?

mean you come to florida after you meet you here, but it’s such a pain he has to get away with it. It’s the way back, right the way back, no matter what time you leave. But you know it’s like what time you get home, like 12 hours with the time change. But you know it’s like the work, hard play. We usually go out and we do a lot of work together, we talk and I feel like the best ideas and best conversations come because, yeah, we’ll go out, grab a couple of beers and grab a couple of drinks, which actually I don’t know if I told my audience this that one time.

0:17:54 – Luke Norman

Yeah, you did the last time Me teaching my boat, thank you.

0:17:59 – Frank Curzio

We took your boat and we just went to a bar and I had a meeting, I think, with Keith Newmire like three hours later and we just drink and drink and drink and it wasn’t like we’re drinking a pound or anything. But when we came out your boat was on land. I’m like, oh shit, I gotta get to me.

0:18:13 – Luke Norman

Yeah, they call it a king tide up here. And uh yeah, we’re both standing there scratching our heads, but thankfully we were still walking distance from the bar, so we got to go wait the tide out that was was great.

0:18:23 – Frank Curzio

That was great times. That was really great times. So let’s get to your company, us Gold Corp. You just had significant news. I think it’s when you have news like this. It separates you, because you know that I kind of feel like when I look at crypto companies, I think it’s a fascinating industry. However, 90, 92% of the companies thousands that I’ve analyzed over the past seven, eight years are really worthless. I don’t know if that percentage is that high for junior miners, but there is a lot of crap out there. And when you have significant news like you had about a month ago, it really changed the landscape of your company. It popped 50%, still holding its gains a little bit off its highs. Talk about that and the permit and the significance of it.

0:19:03 – Luke Norman

Yeah, of course, because it’s extremely significant, not just the fact that we have a permit to mine, but in the relative amount of time that we achieved that goal.

So, Frank, again as you mentioned, you’ve been around this company and familiar with this company since its onset, which we went public in 2017, june of NASDAQ listed, of course, but it was 2020, right when COVID hit that we as a company made a decision to move our focus from Nevada and just pure exploration, which is just a constant dilution on us as equity holders and I say us, not just the viewers who are shareholders, but I’m a big investor in this company, as you know, Frank. So it was then that we transitioned onto the development of Copper King, the CK Gold Project, as we refer to it in our marketing materials. We brought in George B, who’s one of the largest gold mine builders on the planet, and a whole complement of management that was suited towards development. That was four years ago. Within four years, we established a reserve, which, for those of you who are listening that don’t understand the importance of a reserve, it’s the difference between this being a science project and a bankable asset. It’s real estate. Now, a million and a half ounces of gold your viewers do the mental math on that, but $2,300 an ounce approximately, and we’ve got 1.5 million ounces of that. We have that reserve in hand.

Then the people, the street, the smarter, wiser analyst types said yeah, you’ve got a reserve, but we think your location 20 miles outside of a township, a couple of miles away from the state park you can have all the gold in the ground you want You’ll never get a permit. Well, we knew, and the state of Wyoming knew, that that was not the case. We have Martin Marietta, two miles away, already open cast mining there, just for waste rock what we term waste rock sorry, a very valuable aggregate source nearby. So yes, in four years we’ve taken this from a science project to a reserve, to a fully permitted, also known as de-risked asset. Well, actually, the terminology we use is bucket ready. That means the shovels can move in now as soon as we get our last little hurdle overtaken in the next couple of weeks, we could be on there with buckets tomorrow. So that’s a huge value add to us as a company.

You’re talking about us being up X percent over the last couple of months. We’re still hovering near all-time lows, which is crazy. And it’s back to that previous discussion point. Why is capital not flowing into my sector? Because I do know they’re coming. I’m quite sure of that, because I firmly believe we’re in a secular gold bull market. I think we’re in a secular copper bull market. Great for us. But you know I’ll let you kind of derive this question as all right. So where is the value in this company then why? So I mean fire at me with some questions here, because it could get interesting.

0:22:22 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, no, I appreciate that too and thank you so much for explaining, because you have people that are going to listen to this, that are geologists in the gold industry forever, and there’s other people that just, hey, this is a cool stock, I want to know more about it, and sometimes people don’t understand the terms, and I love that. What does this mean in terms of right now? So you know over a million ounces of gold, you know gold equivalent and you know it’s worth a certain amount in the ground, and when you get a permit, it obviously goes up even more. So talk about the value of that, because I will say, being in Wyoming, I mean one of the most business friendly states, probably the most business friendly state right now. I mean it’s incredible when it comes to everything drilling, mining, even what happened with Delaware, where Elon Musk got a contract 2018.

If I did this, I’m going to make this amount of money, and they just reversed that for Delaware, which is the one state for incorporation, and now he’s moving his company, the headquarters to Wyoming and Texas. So Texas and Wyoming has just been taking advantage of it. So being in the right area is absolutely perfect, business friendly, very, very important, especially since, like you said earlier, right 20 years, 16 years, 18 years, you know to get these things up and running from when you start. So talk about the valuation, the importance of that permit in terms of the value of where your company was valued before the permit and now after.

0:23:36 – Luke Norman

Right. Well, this is going to get challenging because this is where I’m probably going to start to lose people with numbers and I played around with it before this call. I’ve had multiple times where I get asked to explain this, so bear with me everyone. This is a work in progress to a pre-feasibility study that we did Now. That was again taking our reserve report and putting an economic framework to it so that then we could advance that to permits. So we conducted that pre-feasibility study, that economic understanding of the deposit, in December of 2021, okay, so now that’s almost three years old. It’s two and a half years old, right, Frank? Okay, but the numbers that we used in there to establish the economic case for this project was 16. I’m going to use approximates, okay, I’m just not going to get too far into the way. Approximately $1,600 gold and $3 copper by the pound, right, because when we talk about this reserve, as you rightfully pointed out, it’s called a gold equivalence, and what the breakdown on.

0:24:44 – Frank Curzio

This is and what was the average for gold?

0:24:46 – Luke Norman

$1,600 gold it was actually $1,625, but $1,600 gold and $3 copper $325 copper. Okay, that’s what we use, that was the industry standards at the time and that’s how we so it’s used. That was the industry standards at the time and that’s how we so it’s. The breakdown of that gold equivalence, by the way, is a million ounces of gold and 480 million pounds of copper. Right? So move that entire economic forecast to today. Um, we’re looking at 2300 gold. We’re looking at, you know, 475 copper and climbing.

You can imagine what that’s done to our net present value, or that hard number which is what we use to value these companies. And I’m going to try and get to how this works out on a per share basis. But there’s other variables in there too, of course. Hey, the cost of mining’s gone up, the cost of energy’s gone up, just not nearly to the same degree as the underlying metals in our project. But when we ran that economic base case $1,600 gold our all-in sustaining cost worked out to be about $800 an ounce. So the margin on the asset was around 50% Now that’s relative to the industry is incredible. Down 50% Now that’s relative to the industry is incredible. You know the big boys are more like cost them $1,300 an ounce to mine every ounce of gold that they produce so great margins there.

So today we again have a much higher metal prices, so the NPV number would be significantly higher. But for the sake of argument, just to point to our stock and its current standing, I’m going to use those original numbers. So December 2021, we brought out of that what’s called an NPV, a net present value, and that’s what’s used by the analyst community within the mining sector to establish a ratio of approximately where our stock should be. So if we were just a science test, like we were leading into it in 2020, that million and a half ounces, we should get about 0.2 to 0.4 of our NPV. Our NPV, again on the reported, was $323 million at $1,600.

0:26:57 – Frank Curzio

And where’s your market cap now?

0:26:59 – Luke Norman

So our market cap right now is $60 million.

0:27:02 – Frank Curzio

Okay.

0:27:03 – Luke Norman

Okay, pre-permit yeah, with permit and reserve.

0:27:08 – Annoucer

So if we were?

0:27:09 – Luke Norman

just an exploration company, it would be about 0.2 to 0.4 of that. So as a reserve, unpermitted, around 0.4 to 0.6 of that number, so 0.4 being around $120 to $180 million. Sorry, with a reserve now with a fully permitted ready to go, we should be valued around 0.6 to 0.8. I told you it was going to get confusing Of that $323 million value. So really, the market cap of this company in any kind of normalized market using those very discounted gold prices would be around $180 million to $250 million, so somewhere around three times Four X. Yeah, your market cap. Yeah, correct. But here we are. Capital inflows haven’t happened yet we are updating our PFS so we’ll be bringing in those higher metal prices. We assume, believe that’s going to have a real impact on NPV. And then there’s some other factors as well which I think hopefully we’ll get to touch on here this afternoon.

0:28:22 – Frank Curzio

Keep going, keep going, talk about it.

0:28:24 – Luke Norman

Stages, yours go well, you know you and I have talked about this, so, all right, so taking you, look, you waited a long time for this shit, so come on. I mean, it’s been a bear marker forever. It stages yours, go bud and you can see exactly, and you can see the excitement. Yeah and you should be up so during that four-year process, uh, which again is incredibly, you know well managed by our management team. Uh, what we uncovered, what we realized, is a number of little factors around this project.

Hey, I told you about that. Uh, proximity in terms of to a work hub sorry, an employment hub, great. So we’re going to be able to develop this and we’re going to have the employees and the workers uh, very easy to get them in and out. Oh, we’re doing engineering here. We’re going to build a mine. We should look at this rock, waste rock. The qualities of that, martin Marietta, I mentioned, are two miles away, a $35 billion materials company mining just the rock and selling it as aggregate into an insatiable Colorado infrastructure build going on, lots of infrastructure going on in Wyoming, as you talked about. So, lo and behold, our waste rock 30 to 35 million tons of it sitting on surface for free, has a price tag on it at about $20 a ton. So none of that’s priced into this pre-feasibility study.

So you know, I think our next step here, Frank, is to start to bring in some of those additional benefits Waste rock, post-production pit, which is a nice granite hole in the ground the local community is desperate for as an addition to their water reservoir network. So I think we’re going to be a big news generator and a big value generator this year and that’s what I want people to understand. We haven’t just hit a marker being a permit to mine, which would then raise the next question oh, but now you have to rush out and raise $250 million to build this mine. Well, how about we go about first adding in these other value additions to it and see what comes of this? Because this project has just turned from a gold mine that we were about to start talking about, or that we began talking about today, to a copper gold producer, to now also a materials aggregate producer and, ultimately, a water reservoir post-production. So a lot of exciting stuff going on in the background.

0:30:50 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, and that project is copper. It’s amazing Just to visit it.

it was amazing. I visited about three, four years ago and that’s why I’ve been in the stock Again. It’s been a bear market in this industry. So the next step is what you may look to raise money. Have you ever thought of looking outside the traditional avenues? Because even for us, when we did our token and everything, hedge funds wanted to come in and investors, you know what they want. I mean, you’ve been through the financing process where we want five-year warrants, we want really cheap stock, we want this, we want that, we want everything and, yeah, it results in a lot of dilution. They want to get in because they know the industry is not ripe for raising capital right now. So it’s not easy and sometimes you have to give away the fork, but yet there’s a lot of individual investors. Guys on my file. We’ve raised money for certain companies get into really great ideas. Have you ever thought of using the non-traditional routes?

because you know, I feel like you know, in a nice way they’re going to bend you over and that’s their job.

0:31:44 – Luke Norman

But now it’s even worse and I feel like you know it’s kind of crazy so, yes, first and foremost, obviously, even down to tokenizing some of our early gold production. Our year one production is the largest year of production in the mind, which is unheard of usually. Usually that’s upside down the other way around higher grade is deeper. So, ford, selling some gold, maybe tokenizing it? Yeah, we’re exploring, like very that would be what we call extremely non-traditional sources of capital and we are looking into those. But given that we’re not, as I just kind of ranted about, just a gold copper deposit anymore, we’re also a materials deposit with the aggregate source, we’ve also got all the green credits that would come with that aggregate source and the fact that that pit, that exposed pit, would be used as a reservoir. Now we can look into a myriad of different sources of capital. The state of Wyoming is on record has precedence of investing up to 50% in certain CapExes If it’s beneficial to the state. We’re exploring that.

Again, back to the waste rock. We’ve had mine developers approach us and say, hey, we’ll do the mining for you, just for that waste rock, which would have a huge incremental effect on our cost of production, for example. Just to remind you again, I’m a big investor, big shareholder in this company. The last thing I want is a balloon of equity being pulled out on this company and just diluting us all. So even under normal course funding it’s going to be, a vast majority of this will be debt that we utilize. Put this into production. It’s just where those sources of debt and equity come from, and I don’t want to give up too much information right now, Frank, because it could be detrimental to it ultimately. But it is funny you brought that up and yes, non-traditional sources of capital is something we are focusing on very much right now and that’s why we’re not just racing out and digging a hole with a permit in hand. We’ve got all those value adds. I want to bring this equity up as high as we can possibly. You know we’re trailing.

I talked about where we should be right 0.6 to 0.8 in NPV but we didn’t point out where we are, which is about 0.03. We’re just way below value right now. So we just really need to get this thing up and moving and that’s why we’re out, we’re marketing, we’re talking, we’re on the road in the US. We’re not listed on the TSX, which is considered a great exchange in the US. We’re trading higher than $5, so we’re not a penny stock. Any retail investor in the US can become a shareholder of US Gold Corp tomorrow. We’re running ads on CNBC and on Fox Business. We’re just making sure that we’re getting the story out there now and I think eyeballs are starting to see us. That’s why we’re seeing a little appreciation in the stock. But we’re going to fill that inelastic void between our current share price and industry norms of where we should be trading.

0:34:55 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, no, that’s great stuff, so. So how long would it take, say, if someone wrote you a check for the amount that you needed, whatever, that is, you know, 18 months?

0:35:03 – Luke Norman

Wow.

0:35:03 – Frank Curzio

Are you?

0:35:04 – Luke Norman

kidding me. That’s all it is.

0:35:05 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, yep, because you have, like, the infrastructure in place. I’ve been there, it’s easy to get there. And now some people talk about you know we have a 50 million gold deposit in wherever, yet you got to dig through, like you know, 300 feet of ice and it’s never going to get developed in infrastructure. People will tell you that oh, we got it’s worth a billion dollars.

The current price is going to cost you three billion to get out of the ground, so it’s worth. You know workers out a lot of the infrastructure. Is that true? It’s only 18 months.

0:35:33 – Luke Norman

Yeah.

0:35:34 – Frank Curzio

Yeah.

0:35:34 – Luke Norman

And look, look further to your point about, hey, these deposits under ice and different things, okay, where’s the biggest gold mining district now on the planet Nevada. I was just having a really interesting conversation with an executive over at another mining company where they’re developing two assets in Nevada. You cannot get employees in Nevada anymore, this whole generation. You know the workers are really hard to come by. We’re 20 miles outside of an employment hub and I just cannot continue to, you know, preach the importance of that because all these big Chilean copper mines and different things that are getting developed around the world man camps and fly in, fly out.

I know we’re not relative to the size of those things, but hey, we’re a minute fractional market cap company and the leverage here, with the opportunity and the fact that this can be developed in a year and a half, that the employment, the employee base is there for us. No man camps, everyone’s bussed in, bussed out. People are going to start to stand up and recognize this. And look, my biggest concern, Frank, is I don’t want any unwanted M&A approach right now we’re talking to companies, but I want to unlock this value. Hey, I’ve been around this thing since 2017, 2017 and we’ve got just a whole bundle of it just waiting to be tapped, and that’s what we’re going to work towards.

0:37:02 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, yeah, 18 months. I didn’t know that. It just puts you on a different level when you get the permit right. You get the permit, you have the infrastructure in place. You know we talked about having a good management team. I mean, there’s things that I’ve been preaching for 10, 15 years that you actually you really need. That’s really essential, and you know, you separate yourself right, right away when you have that, even in a great jurisdiction, as well as Wyoming.

0:37:22 – Luke Norman

So, uh, which is awesome, uh and and look what else sorry, look what else is going into Wyoming, by the way. You know, just this is a little bit of a side thing, but aside from the massive amount of wind turbines that are going in there, copper transmission is some of the biggest data centers and now AI centers are getting built in Wyoming. Why? Because it’s a taxation system, et cetera. I mean, we’re talking about what is traditionally a purely resource state resource state.

So it’s quite serendipitous that we’re going to be producing all these critical materials, including the aggregates that’s going to put in all this infrastructure. So it’s just, it’s a fun time and again, you can see the energy in me right now, Frank, and the excitement around this project. I almost get to separate ourselves now from just being a traditional junior minor. You know we already were separated because we weren’t listed on the TSX venture like everyone else. You know, standalone on a senior exchange. You know, take it on the chin. But now you know we can explore a myriad of just other opportunities and individuals that are interested in in the materials we’re producing.

0:38:33 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, and I feel like, even from the stock perspective, with the copper angle, I feel like and even prices, I feel like it’s uranium, like uranium. We always saw the bullish picture. We always saw the supply, demand and balance. We’ve seen it pretty much 2015, 16, 17. It just took such a long time. And now you see it right. I mean, prices were below what $30, $20, uh, and now you see it right. I mean, prices were below what? 30, 20, and now they’re whatever? A little bit below 91 to 100. But you could see like it’s going to happen. It’s inevitable, right, because we don’t have a lot of copper out there. And I can tell you one thing for sure someone that covers ai there people do not understand the demand electricity that we’re going to need to power these things. People joke around. They don’t joke around. Actually, seriously, it’s a joke about talking about Bitcoin mining. That’s going to cap about 15% of the growth to 2030. The rest of it’s coming from data centers and the amount that’s going in to data centers.

0:39:22 – Luke Norman

The CEO of Rio Tinto is talking about it. Watch that video. Watch the video I talk about the CEO of Rio Tinto. The number one thing out of his mouth when they talked about pent-up demand was AI.

0:39:35 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, when you look at electricity barely growing, you could take the last 10 years barely growing, maybe 1%. Now we’re looking at 3% to 5% growth going forward to 2030. The only reason why it’s not going out further is because people are like, well, is this trend going to continue? It is going to continue because the spending is there, the capex is there. This isn’t something you’re forecasting like dot com. Hey, we could be here, this is here. I mean you have NVIDIA just generate $26 billion in a quarter. Ok, that’s here, that’s spending. It’s real spending. But people say they worry about electricity. Look at the stats they have. Most people do not have a clue of electricity generation we’re going to need which is great for copper and great for now that you got your permits, so you know really powering these evs in california with coal.

0:40:20 – Luke Norman

I just don’t understand the demand on on all these materials. It’s exponential and it’s unavoidable. And you look all the bureaucrats in Canada and the US. You can’t get a permit to save yourself. I should have mentioned. The only reason we got permitted is we’re dealing with a state, not a federal agency, and the state could deploy time and it wasn’t politicized. It’s not politicized because, again, Wyoming’s a resource state, so that’s why you’ve also got Gates is building those test nuclear plants there now, right, I mean we could go on talking about this for quite some time.

0:41:00 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, yeah. Well, it’s great to see it because even when I’ve interviewed you know it’s tough. You want to be optimistic, you want to be bullish, but it’s tough when you’re in just a horrible market for mining in general and you could see the difference in you. And I don’t know if it’s because you just went to New Zealand I don’t know if you went there with your boys or not but it’s great. I know you were going to do this a week ago and you came back, which is cool. Hopefully it was a great time for you. But really great to have you on, luke, and if people want yeah, of course.

0:41:28 – Luke Norman

So obviously, our website’s the best portal, which is wwwusgoldcorp.gold. We do have the com. Finally, we purchased that. We’re just assimilating everything over to com as well. But, yeah, usgoldcorp.gold, or just Google us and you’ll find us. Give it a click. There’s a pretty handy presentation on there, gives you a lot of information on us and it gets down into our team. Our team’s a proven team of building some of the biggest minds on the planet, so we’re the real deal. You know that, Frank. I think the marketplace is going to start to recognize that and I look forward to future discussions with you when we get some of those other milestones under us.

0:42:14 – Frank Curzio

That sounds great. George B yeah great, I met him as well and just great team. And yeah, and now the permit changes. You right, we went from gold to com Now you’re getting serious, exactly, it’s funny those domain names. We try to get them. Sometimes too, it’s a pain in the ass, but no, that’s really cool. Listen, thanks so much for coming on. It’s nice to see this optimistic outlook. Things are going great and I know Sherald’s going to be really happy with the next couple of years of where this company’s going where you’re going to take them.

0:42:43 – Luke Norman

So thanks for joining us, man, yeah thank you, cheers, take care.

0:42:53 – Frank Curzio

Enjoyed the interview, starting to line up some really great people contacting Everyone’s like alright, I can do it. I can do it in two months, three months. One person who I love I’m going to get just told me they’re going to Europe for three months and it’s good because they’re going to avoid a lot of elections going on, which there’s elections going on in Europe too, but it’s funny with schedules and just planning. But I’m really looking forward to the interview process and we’ll try to get at least one or two of these a month and hopefully we’ll get three a month in the Wall Street Unplugged podcast and really bring in names that are going to educate us, that are going to teach us, that may have a different opinion than us. I’m always open to that. We really have to get back to that. We can’t have conversation.

The invitation to Army War College it was Democrats and Republicans in a room and we all just talked about the problems and national security. It was a national security conference and stuff and it was fascinating, because these people are so fascinating and when you take a step back from all the bullshit that you hear in the news and the separation and you have to hate these people. One side has to hate the other. That’s what they want. When, man, there’s so much to learn from each other, especially when you take, maybe, the 5% 7%, that’s all the way on the left. 5% 7%, that’s all the way on the right I think most people are in the middle and they want what’s best for their children, their kids and stuff and serious issues, and most of these people, if you take out the politics, are pretty freaking cool right. So we got to get back to that and learning. And you know, I think I told you guys that Elizabeth Warren was one of the guys that I met as a professor at Berkeley. He’s married to his daughter. I would love to get Elizabeth Warren on and I disagree with a lot.

She says but how do you come together? How do you regulate the crypto industry? She says that she wants more banking laws, which I think is protecting the big guys because they’re making a fortune right, Would they make $105 billion in sales the last quarter and $30 billion in profits? Of course they want more regulation because it doesn’t allow any mid-cap bank to become one of the big four. So is it lobbying dollars? It’s not, but serious conversations where it’s like why do you hate crypto? You’re an idiot. Nothing’s accomplished that way. Let’s see if you can come to terms, because crypto is getting regulated. Crypto is getting regulated. It’s 50 million people in the US. It’s intertwined, all these sectors. Now you need to regulate it. It can’t be regulated like a bank. These companies are not banks, right. So you want more regulation around that, which is crazy.

But have that conversation, even with someone that I disagree with a lot of things that she believes in, which is fine. And having that conversation, being open, I think, is very, very powerful. And those are the interviews I’m gonna try to get. I don’t know if I’ll get that one. It might be pretty tough, but I’m gonna ask because I got along very well with this person who was just brilliant I mean again, berkeley professor and just into submarine robotics and stuff like that and lasers, on these things and explore. It’s just incredible. This guy’s really incredible and very, very smart and sharp. But those are interviews I really want to start nailing, so building up a nice lineup. It’s not hard to get a lot of these people.

If your new podcast is a little more difficult, saying we’ve been around 15 years is really cool. We’ve had closing on a 15 million downloads for this podcast. I’m humbled by that. Those have come from over a hundred countries, which is incredible. Thank you so much for trusting me and listening. I take that responsibility very seriously when I’m recommending stocks to you, when I’m recommending and giving you advice and putting people in front of you.

I think what I realized too and I’m going to be honest with you, right, you guys know that I always I just talk off the cuff here, maybe it’ll get me in trouble, but when we first started the Dollar Stock Club newsletter which is part of the Wall Street Unplugged premium brand, you know, and that’s a paid version the original one was hey, we’re going to take an idea that these guys mentioned, that people that I’m interviewing that I mentioned, and then we’ll track them. And some of them were not that good, and that’s on me, right, I want to put people in front of you that are going to make you money, not people that are not. And it’s not like they had an agenda or anything, but it doesn’t matter if you have an agenda or not. I mean it does. Of course, I’m not going to have those people on the podcast, but if you don’t have good recommendations and people are losing money, then what’s the point of me putting them in front of you? That’s the way I’ve always looked at it, right? So you know a lot of the old people older when I say old I mean people that I had on the podcast back in the day.

Once we started tracking, I realized, wow, you know, some of these things are big losers. I didn’t like them and I said you know what? Maybe we go a little bit away from the interview format. I want to go politicians, I want to get really involved, and we have, you know, 15 million downloads, a hundred countries, been around 15 years. We have a very good name. Uh.

What’s going to help, if you guys want to do me a favor, is is feel free to post, uh, yeah, whether it’s one star, four stars, five stars. I mean, I’d never asked anyone to do that, but the more we do that, uh, the more we move up in rankings and ratings, and that’s what a lot of people look at too is reviews and stuff like that. So if you could post a review on iTunes, it would be appreciated. But what that does is people see that and I used to never care because in COVID. They really ripped me apart for telling the truth and you guys know that when I covered that, I couldn’t believe it, that it was political and stuff like that, and I never cared about the comments. I really don’t care. I really don’t. If you want to listen to me, listen to me. It’s a free podcast. If not, don’t, it’s your choice really. But in terms of getting the best people in front of you and people looking at that and they see these stats and stuff like that, they love it and that’s going to determine whether a person comes on the podcast or not. So the 15 million downloads is great. A hundred countries. You see the reviews and everything. If you can, if you want to post a review positive, negative, whatever just feel free to post a review. That’s fine. I’d really appreciate that.

But you’re going to see more interviews and, by the way, if you know somebody right that thinks you know, you think they’d be great for interview format. I mean, everyone’s educated in some kind of area and in some kind of area and I say it all the time, right, people identify smart and they come to me and say, Frank, you’re smart. I’m like, what does that mean? I’m good at what I do, because I do this for 30 years. I have passion about it. But everyone is specialized at something that they love, that they’re really good at right, and I love that because the passion comes out. You want to listen to that. I don’t care what it, you’re going to be into it, we’re driven by that. We’re driven by passion, right, it’s just, it’s great, no matter what it is.

But if you see someone like that, you know, give me a heads up and you know you want to make an introduction. Or if you’re like Frank, you know what? I heard this guy talk about energy. I heard this guy talk about biotech company or whatever. It might be a good interview. Send me an email Frankcurzaresearchcom. With that said, don’t say hey, Frank, it’ll be a good idea.

If you interview Warren Buffett or Icahn, I’ll try to get those guys on. I’ll reach out to them. I probably have people that could help me do that. I’d like to get Rory and Kitty on and talk about why is it GameStop that you like so much and why don’t you pick another stock? But I really want to get some of these guys in front of you to help educate you and get a difference of opinion and stuff like that and you’re going to see a lot more. So, again, if you know anyone out there and you say, hey, this guy’s great, this guy I just found a guy through Luke who’s actually one of the largest shareholders we talked a little bit about, who build data centers for some of the largest Bitcoin mining companies, and I’m like wow, that guy knows everything about it. So Bitcoin mining companies and I’m like wow, that guy knows everything about it. So I’m going to get that interview. I think he’s busy for the next month or two, but these are the people I want to bring in front of you and hopefully they’re able to educate us and we’ll have fun with it. But it’s going to be a lot of fun going forward with these interviews and hopefully you enjoyed that with Luke. He’s a really good friend. Silver on fire right now, bitcoin also holding up pretty well, but it really is nice to see. So that’s it for me. If you got any questions, comments again. Frank@curzioresearchcom.

Daniel and I are going to be hosting Wall Street Unplugged Premium. Tomorrow. We’ll have a new recommendation for you for our Dollar Stock Club portfolio, so make sure you pay attention, then I’ll see you. Then Take care.

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Wall Street Unplugged is produced by Curzio Research, one of the most respected financial media companies in the industry. The information presented on Wall Street Unplugged is the opinion of its host and guests. You should not base your investment decisions solely on this broadcast. Remember, it’s your money and your responsibility.