"A twenty-two-foot-high golden statue of the President with his arm raised in defiance (paid for by a group of crypto investors) was dedicated at the Trump National Doral golf course, in Miami. "The Real Deal - GOLD," Trump bragged on Truth Social. (Not for nothing, but the statue is, in fact, bronze, coated in gold leaf.)"
"The price of the precious metal has skyrocketed-briefly surpassing a record five thousand dollars an ounce earlier this spring-and, as Jennifer Wilson reports from the American West for this week's special issue, this has led to a boom in prospecting not seen since the days of the forty-niners. It's being called Gold Rush 2.0."
"California's Route 49, a.k.a. the Mother Lode Highway, which runs through the Sierra Nevada foothills, is bustling again with fortune seekers. But in this modern version of the boom the big money isn't just emerging from riverbeds or secret mines. It's also a race for attention. "Today's gold rush is a #goldrush," Wilson explains."
""On YouTube, prospecting influencers post videos of themselves fending off bears and spelunking down old mines. A content creator with the moniker Pioneer Pauly has an A.S.M.R. video of his hand caressing a pile of gold nuggets. His videos have accumulated three hundred million views.""
A twenty-two-foot golden statue of Donald Trump was dedicated at Trump National Doral in Miami, paid for by crypto investors, serving as a visual metaphor for a claimed “golden age.” Gold fixation has expanded beyond him as gold prices briefly surpassed $5,000 an ounce, sparking renewed prospecting across the American West. California’s Route 49, known as the Mother Lode Highway, is seeing renewed fortune seekers. The new boom includes competition for attention, with YouTube prospecting influencers posting videos of mining, bear encounters, and gold nugget ASMR that have drawn massive view counts. Despite new details, the core myth of hidden wealth remains influential and harmful.
Read at The New Yorker
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