The Biggest Undeveloped Deposit in America
When a newsletter promo talks about an “Alaska gold mine,” it is almost always talking about one project: the Pebble Project in southwest Alaska. This is a gold, copper, and molybdenum porphyry deposit, and it is one of the largest undeveloped mineral deposits on the planet. The Associated Press and The New York Times both describe it in those terms, which matters, because most of the big claims in gold promos do not survive that kind of scrutiny.
Jim Rickards, the macro strategist behind Strategic Intelligence at Paradigm Press, has been pitching Pebble through a presentation called “Trump’s Secret $2 Gold Mine.” The promo says the deposit holds more than 161 million ounces of gold along with a large copper resource, and it puts the total in-ground value as high as $2.7 trillion, or “almost $1 trillion” at current prices.
The company that owns Pebble is Northern Dynasty Minerals, which trades as NAK on the NYSE American exchange. That ticker is the real subject of the “$2 gold mine” pitch. When Rickards talks about a stock that could “double your money within minutes,” he is talking about NAK.
What the Promo Actually Claims
The pitch makes three main claims. First, that the company owns the largest mineral reserve of its kind on the planet, worth up to $2.7 trillion. Second, that the stock could jump by at least another $2 and deliver “10-fold profits or more.” Third, that three “smoking guns” point to approval: insiders owning roughly 10 percent of shares and having “bet $68 million or more,” a meeting with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick tied to a “bring copper home” agenda, and the fact that Lutnick’s firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, underwrote the mine during the first Trump term.
The gold and copper at Pebble are real. What is less real is the idea that any of this is new, or that a specific date will unlock it. Rickards has been re-airing this presentation since April 9, and the countdown timer has moved more than once. It started around April 15, slid to July 1, and now points at November 3. The event behind the date keeps shifting because the underlying event is not what the promo implies.
The Permitting Wall
Pebble has been stuck in permitting for more than 20 years. The mine sits near Bristol Bay, home to the most valuable wild salmon fishery in the world, and that proximity is the core of the problem. In January 2023 the EPA issued a Clean Water Act veto that effectively blocked the project. In 2024 the Army Corps of Engineers rejected a key permit. Northern Dynasty and the state of Alaska sued to reverse the veto, and the Department of Justice is still defending it.
So the real November 3 event is an expected summary-judgment ruling in that lawsuit, not a mine approval. Briefs were filed in mid-April and oral arguments ran through the summer. A favorable ruling would clear one legal roadblock, but it would not hand the company a producing mine overnight.
What You Can Actually Buy
NAK traded around $1.95 when the promo first teased it in April, around $1.72 in July, and near $1.61 as of mid-August, per market data. That gives the company a market value of roughly $900 million. The 161 million ounces the promo cites would be worth about $16 billion for every $100 move in gold, but that is gross in-ground value, not profit. It ignores the cost of building and operating the mine, the tailings and heap-leach design, and the permitting risk that has defined this project for two decades.
Both of Alaska’s U.S. senators oppose the mine, which tells you how the politics cut even in a pro-mining state. For a deeper look at that side of the story, see our article on the Pebble Project in Alaska, and for the project’s full history see the Pebble Project explained. If you want context on why gold itself has been climbing, our piece on gold investment is a good companion.
The Alaska gold mine story is a real deposit wrapped in a sales countdown. The metal is there. The permits are not, and that gap is the whole trade.
The Smoking Guns, Examined
The three pieces of evidence the promo calls smoking guns deserve a closer look. The insider ownership figure is real but overstated: executives do hold roughly 10 percent of the shares, yet most of that comes from stock, options, and warrants paid as compensation rather than open-market cash purchases. The claim that they “bet $68 million or more” overstates the conviction behind it. Separately, Kopernik Global, the large outside holder the pitch treats as a bullish sign, has been selling rather than adding.
The Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick meeting and the “bring copper home” theme are real signals that Washington wants more domestic copper, and Pebble does carry copper alongside its gold. But a policy mood is not a permit, and Donald Trump Jr. publicly called for blocking Pebble back in 2020. The story has more than one voice inside the Trump orbit, and that is the honest read of the situation.
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