The Tungsten Market Is Warning of an Upcoming War

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:18)
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast, I'm Joe Weisenthal.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:22)
And I'm Tracy Alloway.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:24)
Tracy, I'm in a mood of a little bit of heartbreak this morning.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:28)
Oh, mood of a little bit of heartbreak. That sounds like a country single, doesn't it?

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:32)
That's right.
No. You're singing.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:34)
I know what you're sad about. You're singing the Tungsten Cube Blues.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:38)
The Tungsten Blues. I'm actually a little shook. In 2022, remember the Tungsten Cube hype?

**Tracy Alloway** (0:43)
Unfortunately.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:45)
I bought one. And it was the only- I'm well aware. And it feels so good, like a nice big block of Tungsten in your hand. It feels so good. It's so unexpectedly heavy.
Probably like a little like wild autism, like I like really like sort of like heavy things, like weighted blankets and heavy objects. And I was going to bring it to this episode because I know you love props sometimes.

**Tracy Alloway** (1:05)
I do like a good prop.

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:06)
And I was like, oh, I'll bring a prop. I couldn't find it on my desk. So we did a desk move recently, and either somehow I hope I still find it, either it got misplaced in the move, or because the value of Tungsten has gone up so much, maybe someone stole it.

**Tracy Alloway** (1:22)
I think I know which one it is, Joe.
I think I know. Let me just say-

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:26)
I have a messy desk too.

**Tracy Alloway** (1:27)
For listeners who were lucky enough to have missed out on the Tungsten Cube craze, there was a moment where for some reason, it was mostly crypto bros on Twitter, all seemed to go nuts for buying these Tungsten Cubes and then showing pictures of them on social media. And then promptly, like Joe, forgot about them. And actually, this is a really good analogy for what we're about to talk about, is we're going to talk about Tungsten the Medal. And Tungsten, it turns out, has gone through these cycles where for a few years, it's an absolutely essential strategic asset that you need in order to declare war. And then as soon as the war is over, you kind of forget about it. You still need it for some industrial applications or for novelty desk tours.
But then you find out that you need it again. And so there's this like long running kind of boom bust cycle.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:17)
I'm really sad.

**Tracy Alloway** (2:18)
You're a demonstrative example of how everyone seems to forget about Tungsten, except China.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:24)
I'm actually really sad about this. This is by the way... Oh, wait, can I say one more thing? Yeah, please.

**Tracy Alloway** (2:28)
I know where you can find some Tungsten.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:31)
In Western Australia?

**Tracy Alloway** (2:33)
In the Bahamas.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:34)
Oh, really?

**Tracy Alloway** (2:35)
FTX, famously.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:36)
Oh, that's right. That's right. Yes.

**Tracy Alloway** (2:38)
Was going to install a giant Tungsten cube at their headquarters in the Bahamas. And everyone seems to have forgotten this bit of the Michael Lewis book. At the very, very end of Michael Lewis' book on Sam Beckman Freed, he says he found the giant Tungsten cube in a storage unit in the jungle. And it's probably still there because no one would want to move it.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:59)
Yeah. So it would be so heavy.
I have to say, it's actually depressing me. You know, one of the reasons like I didn't buy the cube as a quote investment unquote, but I think I've always said, you know, one of the things that people don't talk about with hard asset investing is that you actually pay a negative interest rate because A, you have to either pay for storage, constant storage, like a safe or something like that, or if you have a storage unit in the job or eventually security guards, or if you really had a lot of gold or silver or whatever. But then if you don't have that, if you don't do that, then every year there is like a non-zero percent chance that you lose your asset, you misplace it. Yeah. Maybe you have like some keys to a crypto wallet that you lose or whatever. So that is a way of replicating except sort of stochastically the negative interest rate. I think I'm going to find it. I didn't totally forget about it. I had it on my desk even as recently as a few months ago, and I have some very messy drawers. So I think I actually, I'm not, I haven't actually given up hope.