Gold

The Bre-X Gold Fraud: The Biggest Mining Scam in History

St. Paul, Alberta. A town of five thousand people in the Canadian prairies. The town’s only claim to fame is a UFO landing platform, built in 1967 for Canada’s centennial. A concrete pad with a sign inviting extraterrestrial visitors to land. Nothing ever landed. But in the mid-1990s, something stranger than aliens happened to this town. Chapter 18 of Torsten Dennin’s “From Tulips to Bitcoins” tells the story of Bre-X Minerals, the biggest mining fraud in Canadian history.

The Bre-X Gold Fraud: The Biggest Mining Scam in History

St. Paul, Alberta. A town of five thousand people in the Canadian prairies. The town’s only claim to fame is a UFO landing platform, built in 1967 for Canada’s centennial. A concrete pad with a sign inviting extraterrestrial visitors to land. Nothing ever landed. But in the mid-1990s, something stranger than aliens happened to this town. Chapter 18 of Torsten Dennin’s “From Tulips to Bitcoins” tells the story of Bre-X Minerals, the biggest mining fraud in Canadian history.

The End of the Gold Standard: When Money Lost Its Metal Backing

For most of human history, money meant metal. Gold coins. Silver coins. Paper notes that you could walk into a bank and trade for actual gold. Then in 1971, a US president went on television and changed everything. Money became just paper. Backed by nothing but trust.