Greetings Contrarian,

This is The Next Big Rush, your daily drop of mining and energy investing news. Where we come together and… get ready for another Friday! 🍺

Here are the highlights:

💀 Barrick Gets Hacked

🤕 Peninsula Gets Rug Pulled

👏 Ecuador Greenlighting Mine

💀 Barrick Gets Hacked

Canada's largest gold company, Barrick Gold Corp (TSX:ABX), has become a victim of the Russian cybercriminal group Clop in a massive data theft incident affecting hundreds of corporations and nearly 20 million individuals worldwide.

Clop, which usually encrypts files and demands ransom, conducted a “smash-and-grab” attack using a zero-day vulnerability in MOVEit, a file-sharing system owned by Progress Software Corp.

Barrick Gold has not disclosed the extent of the attack or confirmed it officially. Other Canadian organizations, including Sun Life Financial and Metro Vancouver Transit Police, were also affected by the breach.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if they asked for gold bars instead of crypto?

🤕 Peninsula Gets Rug Pulled

In a bizarre turn of events, a uranium late-stage developer, Peninsula Energy (ASX:PEN) has been rugged-pulled by Amir Adnani and his team. Uranium Energy Corp (UEC), has terminated its agreement with Peninsula Energy Limited to treat loaded resins and produce dry yellowcake from the Lance ISR Projects.

Peninsula will now accelerate plans for in-house resin processing and yellowcake production at Lance, which will delay the production restart.

Peninsula had a cash balance of US$21.5m and strategic inventory valued at US$11.8m as of June 2023.

Business is a warzone.

👏 Ecuador Greenlighting Mine

The Ecuadorian government has concluded negotiations with Australian miner SolGold (LON: SOL) (TSX: SOLG) to develop the underground Cascabel mine, which requires a $4.9 billion investment over its lifetime. The mine is estimated to generate $35 billion in exports and contribute around $8 billion in royalties and taxes to the state coffers. With an initial operating life of 26 years and an annual processing plant throughput of 25 million metric tons, Cascabel has significant mineral reserves, including 3.3 million metric tons of copper, 9.4 million ounces of gold, and 30 million ounces of silver. Construction is expected to start in 2025, with operations commencing in 2030.

Latin America is BACK, baby!

📰 In Other News:

🤣 Meme Of The Day

Happy Speculating!

The Editor

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.