On November 30, the West African country of Niger made a big move—it directly announced the reclamation of control over all its uranium mines.

This includes the super deposit at Imouraren, which holds reserves of 200,000 tons.

Even more sensational, on November 27, a batch of uranium quietly left the Arlit mining area without anyone noticing, and the French company Orano only found out afterward. The French side was furious and threatened to take the matter to international court, accusing Niger of "violating the arbitration agreement."

Niger's General Abdourahamane Tchiani responded even more forcefully: "Uranium belongs to the people of Niger, not as a legacy left by your colonial era."

The logic behind this is actually very simple—in the past, foreign capital controlled the mines and profits flowed out of the country; now, the state wants to sell the resources itself, and Russia, Turkey, and Iran are all lining up to negotiate cooperation.

The wave of resource nationalism has now reached the core mineral sector.

**While the real world fights resource wars, the digital world is redefining "resources"**

Speaking of resources, another battlefield must be mentioned—game assets.

If uranium mines were the hard currency of the industrial age, then characters, equipment, and land in games are the new oil of the digital era.

What Yield Guild Games (YGG) is doing is quite interesting: turning game assets into productive tools that ordinary people can use.

In the Philippines, players who rent Axie NFT characters through YGG earn more per month than the average local office worker. There are similar cases in Brazil. Essentially, this is about restructuring the relationship between "work" and "assets" using NFTs—you no longer need to spend a lot of money upfront to buy equipment, as borrowed virtual assets can also help you earn real money.

One side is fighting for physical mines, the other is sharing digital mines.

But at the core, it's the same: whoever controls the resources has the power to speak.