Mining financier Frank Giustra has been around the block — 45 years of it, financing mining projects across the globe. And what he sees now is something different. A structural shift, not just a cycle. Copper is heading into a supply crunch just as gold gets revalued as a hedge against sovereign debt and currency debasement.
"Copper is the backbone to almost every electrification industry in the world," Giustra said in an interview. Demand from power grids, electric vehicles, AI data centers, and strategic stockpiling is all hitting at once, and the mining sector can't ramp up fast enough. The result: copper is starting to trade like a scarcity asset, while gold acts less like a commodity and more like a neutral reserve currency in a world drowning in government debt.
Different Signals
Giustra draws a clear line between the two metals. Copper is an industrial barometer — when the economy slows, demand drops. Gold, on the other hand, is "money," he says — a bet against fiat currencies and expanding sovereign debt. He pegs global debt at roughly $350 trillion, leaving governments with few palatable options. Tax hikes and spending cuts are unlikely, so central banks will eventually return to lower rates, quantitative easing, and monetary expansion.
"It's the silent tax," Giustra said. "They're going to rob you through inflation."
He also points to de-dollarization. Central banks are rotating out of U.S. dollar assets and into gold, which the Bank for International Settlements now classifies as a tier-one reserve asset, equivalent to Treasuries. The dollar's share of central-bank reserves has slipped from about 70% to 56%, he said, while "68% of the central banks surveyed this year expect that they're going to be buying more gold in 2026 and beyond."
Recent gold weakness? Just "a liquidity event," not a shift in fundamentals. "I started buying gold in 2001 when it was $250 an ounce. I've never sold my gold," Giustra said. "It's going higher. How high and what period of time? No clue. But I think it's going a lot higher."
The Copper Supply Crisis and the Strategic Four
On copper, Giustra cites JPMorgan forecasts of a 2-million-ton deficit by 2030, widening to 8 million tons by 2035 — and that's before accounting for data centers, which alone may consume roughly 500,000 tons by the end of the decade. Yet large copper deposits can take 10 to 15 years (sometimes 20) to go from discovery to production. Giustra says the world may need six new world-class copper mines every year until 2050 to meet demand.
But such deposits are increasingly rare. Only four undeveloped, near-surface deposits outside the control of major miners meet the scale typically sought by the industry, he says: Copper Giant Resources Corp. (LBCMF) in Colombia (Giustra is an investor), Solaris Resources Inc. (SLSR) in Ecuador, Aldebaran Resources Inc. (ADBRF) in Argentina, and McEwen Inc.'s (MUX) subsidiary McEwen Copper in Argentina.
"The world order as we knew it is dead as the dodo," he noted, describing the race for copper and critical minerals as part of a broader geopolitical contest. China began securing overseas deposits decades ago, while the U.S. and Europe are now trying to catch up as producing nations tighten export controls, domestic processing rules, and permitting requirements.
M&A Is Coming
Despite the scarcity, Giustra says mining majors remain cautious after the last commodity supercycle, when aggressive deals damaged balance sheets before the boom ended around 2012. Majors now prefer to let juniors absorb exploration, permitting, and feasibility risk before buying later at higher prices. "They could care less if they paid two, three, four times the price," Giustra said. "They just want to derisk."
That discipline won't hold. Giustra expects consolidation across every tier — mergers between majors, acquisitions of elite juniors, and defensive combinations among smaller developers seeking scale. "That craziness has not come back," he said, "but it will."
