this post was submitted on 11 May 2026
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I find this perspective funny nowadays, and I want more people to question it, really question it. It's valued at over $1.5 trillion? No, it's worth nothing if it just sits there doing nothing. If you worded it as "Could be worth..." then I'd give it a pass. But don't let yourself be fooled, that lithium has absolutely no real value if it's not mined and put towards something that someone can use to improve their quality of life.
Like to make it completely clear, I could value the moon at $5 trillion, it doesn't matter because I can't actually get to the moon.
I can get to my house, and I can value it at 5 trillion €. That doesn't make it worth 5 trillion €.
If an actual person/company that values things for a living, does an analysis on the value of my house, and it is valued by X€, then it is probably valued at X€. If someone says "pff just because they say so? I'll buy your house for 5€". Then a lot of people will come and say "5€? That's a steal, if you're gonna give it for such a low price, I'll get it for 6€", and it will probably go on until it reaches an amount very close to X€. If it ends up way below X€, the ones that did the analysis would probably want to buy it themselves, because they actually think they can make a lot of profit on that.
I don't know why I have to explain this. This is very basic economics.
False analogy, a house isn't a raw material in the ground that no one has touched.
Let's do one with raw material in the ground:
There is a mountain that is 99% made of solid gold, but none bothered to check. Some random dude has the mineral rights for that mountain.
Suddenly one day, that dude wanders in his mountain and makes a 1m deep hole and finds the gold. He has not yet extracted a single gram of gold.
So you say that mountain has no value?
Or has the analogy have to be lithium now?
The mountain gold itself has no value until extraction begins and the gold is applied to help benefit someone's life. The value of something is derived from a human directly benefiting from it. Only until the lithium is mined and used to do something that helps improve someone's quality of life then it hasn't realized its value yet.
So if you are that dude with the mining rights, you would sell them at the same price before and after discovering the gold right? Since the discovery of gold hasn't changed its value.