Pi Network has implemented a fresh reduction in mining rewards in a bid to boost token scarcity. This coincided with a massive 6.5 million Whale transfer to an exchange. This has led to speculation among investors about its purpose. Pi Network Slashes Mining Rate to Boost PScarcity In a recent post, The Times of Pi
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August has not been very favorable for the market, which Jim Cramer has already anticipated, citing historical records. However, now as September begins, investors have optimistic hopes, especially around the FOMC Meeting time, but Cramer leaves a serious warning, adding that “September Is Seasonally Weak.” Jim Cramer Predicts Bumpy Market Due to Macroeconomic Factors In
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Strategy, previously MicroStrategy, has made another weekly Bitcoin purchase, further solidifying its dominance as the largest public BTC treasury company. This comes amid a decline in the BTC price and MSTR stock, with both assets known to share a strong positive correlation. Strategy Buys 4,048 BTC For $444 Million In a press release, the company announced
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A new push by states to tax the real estate of the wealthy has sparked a backlash among brokers and potential buyers, who say the taxes punish the most important local spenders.
From tax hikes on pricey second homes in Rhode Island and Montana to Cape Cod’s proposed transfer tax on homes over $2 million and the L.A. mansion tax, state and local governments see a revenue gold mine in the pricey properties of the wealthy.
“It’s a smack in the face to people who just spend money here,” said Donna Krueger-Simmons, sales agent with Mott & Chace Sotheby’s International in Watch Hill, Rhode Island.
The tax hikes are being driven by tighter state budgets and populist anger over housing costs. States are looking to offset budget cuts expected from the new tax and spending bill in Washington. At the same time, the housing market has become a tale of two buyers, with the middle class and younger families struggling to afford homes while the luxury housing market thrives from wealthy all-cash buyers.
The solution for many states: tax the homes of the rich.
Rhode Island’s new levy, nicknamed “The Taylor Swift Tax,” is among the most extreme. The popstar bought a beach house in the state’s elite Watch Hill community in 2013.
The measure imposes a new surcharge on second homes valued at more than $1 million. For non-primary residences, or those not occupied for more than 182 days a year, the state will charge $2.50 for every $500 in assessed value above the first $1 million. That charge is on top of existing property taxes and will add up to big increases for luxury homes in Newport, Watch Hill and other well-heeled, summer communities in the state.
A version of this article appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
Swift’s house, for instance, is assessed at around $28 million, according to local real estate records. Her current property taxes are estimated at around $201,000 a year. The new charges will add another $136,442 to her annual taxes, bringing her yearly total to $337,442 — even though locals say she rarely visits.
Real estate brokers say the increase targets the very taxpayers who already contribute the most. Wealthy second-homeowners pay hefty property taxes but don’t use many local services, since their primary residences are in New York; Boston; Palm Beach, Florida; or other locales. Their kids typically don’t attend the local schools, and they’re infrequent users of the police, fire, water and other municipal services since most stay for only 10 to 12 weeks out of the year.
“These are people who just come here for the summer, spend their money and pay their fair share of taxes,” said Krueger-Simmons. “They’re getting penalized just because they also live somewhere else.”
Brokers and longtime residents say the summer residents of Newport, Watch Hill and other seasonal beach towns are the economic engines for local businesses, restaurants and hotels.
“You’re just hurting the people who support small business,” said Lori Joyal, of the Lila Delman Compass office in Watch Hill. “You’re chasing away the people who spend most of the money in these towns.”
Rhode Island is also hiking its conveyance tax on luxury real estate starting in October. The tax on real estate sales will be an additional $3.75 for each $500 paid above $800,000 for a real estate purchase. At the same time, the state’s steep estate tax deters many of the ultra-wealthy from living there full-time.
Brokers say some second-home owners are considering selling and many would-be buyers are pausing their purchases. While the tax hike alone isn’t expected to lead to any significant wealth flight, Joyal said potential buyers in Rhode Island are already looking at coastal towns in Connecticut as alternatives.
“It’s always about choices,” she said. “At the end of the day it’s about how they can choose to spend their discretionary dollars. Connecticut has some beautiful coastal towns without some of these other high taxes.”
Montana has passed a similar tax. The influx of Californians and other affluent newcomers who poured into the state during Covid has led to soaring home prices and growing resentment over gentrification. Meanwhile, the state’s low income tax rate and lack of a sales tax has left it little room for revenue increases to handle the necessary increase in services.
In May, the state passed a two-tier property tax plan, lowering rates for full-time residents and raising taxes on second homes and short-term rentals. For primary residences and long-term rentals valued at or below the state’s median home price, the tax rate will be 0.76%. Homes worth more than that will face a tiered-rate system of up to 1.9% on any value over four times the median price.
The Montana Department of Revenue expects the changes, which will start next year, will hike second-home taxes by an average of 68%. Brokers say some buyers are waiting to see the tax bills next year before making any decisions about whether to buy or sell.
“I’ve heard about some buyers who have put on the brakes to wait for the dust to settle and see what happens,” said Valerie Johnson, with PureWest Christie’s International Real Estate in Bozeman, Montana.
Johnson said that while the tax was touted by legislators as hitting wealthy second-home owners, it will also hit longtime locals who own investment homes and rent them out for income.
“These are small businesses for many people,” she said.
Manish Bhatt, a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, said tax hikes aimed at wealthy second-home owners may be popular politically, but they rarely make for successful or efficient tax policy. Real property tax reform should be broad based, rather than focused on taxpayers who are singled out just because they don’t live in a community full-time, he said.
“There is a grab to find revenue right now,” he said. “But taxing second-home owners could have the opposite impact — dissuading people from owning a second home or continue to own in those communities.”
While the new taxes alone might not drive out the wealthy, “we do know that taxes are important to businesses and individuals and could cause people to make a decision to buy in another nearby state,” Bhatt said.
The projected revenue from the new taxes may also disappoint. When Los Angeles passed its so-called “mansion tax” in 2022, proponents touted revenue projections of between $600 million to $1.1 billion a year. The tax, imposed on real estate sales over $5 million, has only raised $785 million after more than two years, according to the Los Angeles Housing Department.
Higher interest rates that hurt the housing market have played a role, experts say. Yet Michael Manville, professor of urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, said wealthy buyers and sellers also reduced transactions in response to the tax.
“The lower revenue is a reason to be concerned because it suggests that the tax might actually be reducing transactions, which in turn can reduce housing production and property tax revenue,” he said.
Greenvale Energy (GRV:AU) has announced Commencement of Henbury Field Program
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Rapid Critical Metals (RLL:AU) has announced RCM to Acquire Webbs Consol Silver Project from Lode Res.
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Basin Energy offers uranium and rare earth exposure through high conviction exploration projects within tier-1 jurisdictions.
The group’s primary focus is the testing of district scale uranium and rare earth potential at the Sybella Barkly project, located directly west of the prolific mining town of Mount Isa, in northwest Queensland. These projects are deemed prospective for roll-front uranium, shear hosted hard rock uranium, sediment/ionic clay hosted rare earth elements and for hard rock rare earths. Evidence in support of this comes from the direct proximity and geological analogies to both ASX Paladin Energy’s Valhalla uranium deposit and its uranium source, the Sybella Batholith and for rare earth potential adjacent to ASX Red Metal’s Sybella Discovery.
The company also provides strategic exposure to three projects in Canada’s Athabasca Basin, the heartland of uranium exploration, where it is partnered with TSXV CanAlaska uranium and has a strategic early mover position in the emerging energy metals districts of Sweden and Finland ranked 6 and 1, respectively on the Fraser index in 2024.
With a technically driven exploration focus for uranium and rare earth minerals within tier-one jurisdictions, Basin Energy is well-positioned to capitalize on the global push for clean energy.
Basin holds 5,958 sq km of exploration tenure in the Mount Isa district of northwest Queensland. The projects provide compelling walk-up drill targets that can be rapidly and cost-effectively tested using air core and reverse circulation (RC) drilling.
The drill-ready, district scale opportunity includes:
In addition to these three district-scale targets, the project area contains multiple shear-hosted Valhalla-style uranium targets defined for immediate assessment.
Project location map
The primary model is based on mineralisation sourced from the various granites of the Sybella Batholith, a large north-south trending igneous body containing zones enriched in rare earth elements. This includes the Red Metal (ASX:RDM) giant Sybella Discovery. Several granites from the Sybella are also uranium rich, potentially being the source of Paladin Energy’s (ASX:PDN) Valhalla deposits.
The projects cover an extensive portion of the Sybella Batholith, deemed prospective for granite-hosted REEs, as well as a significant landholding west of the Sybella, known as the Barkly Tablelands. The Barkly Tablelands are regarded as prospective for sediment-hosted mineralisation and was surveyed with airborne electromagnetics (AEM) by Summit Resources in February 2007, prior to its acquisition by Paladin Energy. Whilst numerous targets were identified, no drilling was completed at the time. Importantly, past exploration focused mainly on base metals, phosphate and water bores, meaning the uranium and rare earth potential remains virtually untouched.
Prospective target concepts
The Summit Resources AEM survey identified an extensive network of paleochannels within the Barkly Tablelands, fed from the uranium-rich Sybella Batholith. This network trends south beyond the limits of existing survey data, suggesting even further potential remains to be identified.
Historical drilling in the area noted geological features typically associated with uranium deposits, such as redox fronts, sandstone channels and impermeable cap rocks. However, no uranium assays were conducted at the time.
Given the Sybella granites are considered the potential source of Paladin’s nearby Valhalla uranium deposits, Basin believes significant uranium will have also been transported into these paleochannels through erosion and chemical leaching processes. Previous work by Summit Resources and Furgo has already prioritised several high-potential targets. Basin plans to complete a first pass aircore drilling program to delineate this potential in Q4 2025.
Ternary radiometrics and AEM conductivity depth slice (paleochannels are projected to surface)
Surface and auger geochemistry sampling across the Barkly Tablelands has confirmed significant REE enrichment, with multiple results exceeding 600 ppm TREO. The sediments are directly sourced from the Sybella Batholith with the highest of these values located directly down drainage catchments linked to Red Metals Sybella Discovery.
Sediment-hosted REEs and target zones
Previous AEM surveys also revealed a broad conductive layer within the Barkly Tablelands sediments, approximately 12 metres thick at shallow depths between 20-32 metres, and covering a footprint of over 1,000 sq km. This layer is interpreted to represent a clay-rich unit capable of hosting ionic clay REE deposits.
AEM outlining laterally extensive conductive sediment target
The various granites that make up the Sybella contain zones of enriched REEs, including the Red Metal (ASX:RDM) owned Sybella Discovery.
Basin’s ground includes several prospects (Newsmans Bore, Eight Mile and Threeways) where a shallow proof of concept auger drilling program returned highly encouraging results in 2023.
The most encouraging results from the auger drilling at Newmans Bore reported at over 0.5 m at >1000 ppm TREO, including:
These results are very significant, as mineralisation continued to the end of hole and closely mirrors the geochemical patterns seen by Red Metal prior to their Sybella discovery.
Auger drilling completed by NeoDys, with highlights from Newmans Bore
Red Metals Discovery REE anomaly
Red Metal utilised RC drilling beneath this anomaly and identified broad zones of rare earth anomalism, which led to the Sybella discovery. NeoDys’ auger drilling across Basin’s project has outlined similar levels and scale of rare earth anomalism, demonstrating strong potential for comparable discoveries. See figure below.
Stylised section of NeoDys Newmans Bore auger drilling
The next phase for Basin will be to conduct deeper RC drilling to test potential continuity of these anomalies. Drilling is proposed for Q4 2025.
In addition to the three district scale targets, Basin also sees strong potential for Valhalla-style shear zone uranium mineralisation within the North section of the license. Airborne radiometric data highlights several anomalies crossing both the Sybella granite and the Cromwell metabasalt, features consistent with the alternation patterns seen at other uranium deposits in the region. The scale and geological setting of these radiometric anomalies draws comparison to Paladin Energy’s Mount Isa (Valhalla) project, which contains 148.4 Mlbs of U3O8 at 728 ppm, and a combined 116 Mlbs within the Valhalla, Odin and Skal resources located just 7 km east of Basin’s license
Filtered airborne radiometric data (isolating high-U, low-K rocks) highlighting several potential Valhalla-style shear zone targets in the Cromwell Metabasalt and the adjacent Sybella Batholith
Strategic Global Uranium Exposure
Basin holds interests in three projects, in partnership with TSX-V CanAlaska within the heartland of the world class Athabasca Basin uranium district. The company’s primary focus here is on the Geikie project where early drilling has identified a significant alteration system with analogies to major basement hosted uranium deposits of the district such as Nexgen energy’s prolific Arrow discovery. The company is actively seeking partnerships for the Marshall and North Millennium projects, which are prospective for unconformity style mineralisation with walk up drill ready targets.
The Geikie Project spans 351 sq km on the eastern margin of the Athabasca Basin and benefits from excellent access, with Highway 905 just 10 km to the east.
This underexplored region is considered highly prospective for shallow, basement-hosted uranium mineralisation. Historically overlooked in past exploration campaigns, the area has seen renewed interest following recent basement-style uranium discoveries elsewhere in the district.
In 2025, Basin Energy addedtwo new claims to the Geikie uranium project, consisting of 22.3 sq km, bringing the total project area to 373.1 sq km. Mineral claims MC00022218 and MC00022219 are contiguous to the Preston Creek prospect, where 2024 drilling outlined a large-scale hydrothermal system within a complex structural corridor with uranium anomalism.
Basin has secured 100 percent ownership of multiple reservations and licences across Sweden and Finland, prospective for uranium and critical green energy metals. This portfolio targets shear-hosted and intrusive-related mineralisation and consists of five exploration licenses within Sweden and five reservations in Finland. In 2025, Basin Energy announced theapproval for the Trollberget project application located in Northern Sweden, between the Björkberget and Rävaberget projects within the Arvidsjaur-Arjeplog uranium district. The project added 116 sq km of exploration land, increasing Basin Energy’s total holding to 219 sq km within this highly prospective uranium and green energy metals district.
These results reinforce the high-grade uranium potential of Basin’s Scandinavian portfolio and will directly guide the next phase of drill targeting.
Blake Steele is an experienced metals and mining industry executive and director with extensive knowledge across public companies and capital markets. He was formerly president and chief executive officer of Azarga Uranium (Azarga), a US-focused integrated uranium exploration and development company. He led Azarga into an advanced stage multi- asset business, which was ultimately acquired by enCore Energy (TSXV:EU) for C$200 million in February 2022.
Pete Moorhouse has 18 years of mining and exploration geology experience with extensive experience in the junior uranium sector, having spent over 10 years with ASX-listed uranium explorer and developer Alligator Energy (ASX:AGE). He holds significant competencies in evaluating, exploring, resource drilling and feasibility studies across many global uranium and resource projects.
Cory Belyk holds 30 years’ experience in exploration and mining operations, project evaluation, business development and extensive global uranium experience most recently employed by Cameco in the Athabasca Basin. He was a member of the exploration management team that discovered Fox Lake & West McArthur uranium deposits. Currently CEO/VP of Canadian Athabasca uranium explorer and project generator, CanAlaska (TSXV:CVV).
Matgthew O’Kane is an experienced executive and company director with over 25 years’ experience in the mining and mineral exploration, commodities, and automotive sectors. He has held senior leadership roles in Australia, Asia and North America, in both developed and emerging markets, from start-up companies through to multinational corporations. He has served on the Board of mining and mineral exploration companies in Canada, Hong Kong and Australia. He was a member of the Board of Azarga Uranium from 2013 until its sale to Encore Energy in February of 2022. He is currently a director of two ASX listed exploration and development companies.
Ben Donovan has over 22 years of experience in the provision of corporate advisory and company secretary services. He holds extensive experience in ASX listing rules compliance and corporate governance and has served as a Senior Adviser to the ASX for nearly 3 years Currently CoSec to several ASX listed resource companies including M3 Mining (ASX:M3M), Magnetic Resources (ASX:MAU) and Legacy Iron Ore (ASX:LCY).
Odile Maufrais is an exploration geologist with over 14 years of experience and has an extensive understanding of the uranium exploration and mining industry, having worked at ORANO, one of the largest global uranium producers, for 12 years on various assignments in Canada, Niger, and France. Maufrais has significant Athabasca Basin-specific experience, being involved in over 15 greenfield and brownfield uranium exploration projects located throughout the Basin. Her most recent roles for ORANO comprised leading various uranium exploration campaigns and being an active member of the ORANO research and development team, which involved working on trialing and implementing cost-effective and streamlined drilling techniques within the Athabasca Basin. She also played a key role in the update of the National Instrument 43-101 compliant mineral resource estimate for the Midwest Main and Midwest A deposits. Maufrais holds a Master of Science from Montpellier II University, France.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 index touched a three-week low earlier today, as the bond market faces a major crisis-like situation with weak institutional demand. To pivot from this scenario, Japan Post Bank is planning to issue a DCJPY digital currency during FY2026. Amid weak demand, the 10-year Japan bond yield has surged to over 1.625%, while
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Blockchain security firm PeckShield has confirmed that crypto hacks drained $163 million from users and exchanges last month. This marked a 15% jump compared to July, with a $91 million hack topping the list. $91M Bitcoin Theft Tops August’s Crypto Hacks PeckShield’s data revealed that around 16 major incidents contributed to the month’s losses. Approximately
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s memecoin takes a bullish turn today, making a dramatic comeback in mid-2025. With a staggering 10% price, the TRUMP coin is among the top gainers of the day, leaving behind even the top cryptos like BTC. Notably, the uptrend is more impressive since the broader crypto market is facing a correction
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