Who Would Subscribe To A Claim App?

[Clay Diggins]

There are more than 500,000 active mining claims.

There are more than 240,000 claimants in the BLM database. We can't know the exact number because the BLM has removed 93% of all claimants from public access for the last two years. Those are all the claimants that were registered with the BLM from 1977 until November 2022 when claimants were removed from the database without notice.

The vast majority of mining claims are owned by mining companies. To give you some perspective a little more than 1% of mining claims are small miner claims.

By law those mining companies have to develop their claims to remain listed on the stock exchanges. My for profit business works with a lot of those mining companies and I can tell you first hand that billions are spent each year developing these claims. Just because you didn't see them drilling, sampling or doing aerial surveys doesn't mean that the claims aren't being developed.

If the claims are proven to be "worthless" these companies immediately relinquish the claims to get the liability off their books. Many thousands of claims are closed each year by the larger companies. Last year 31,434 claims were dropped and it looks like this year more than 50,000 (about 10%) will be dropped.

Now to the actual problem of providing current mining claims mapping on a phone.

My company already provides claims mapping to many companies and organizations twice a month. If Onyx wanted to provide this info all they would have to do is acquire a license from me. I doubt they are going to do that for two reasons - lack of customers and liability.

Although the U.S. mining business is huge, third largest in the world with a quarter million highly paid employees, the number of prospectors who don't work for those big mining/exploration companies is really small.

Land Matters provides anywhere from 10,000 to 120,000+ maps a day to our users. We update those maps twice a month and they are free for all users. Many, but not all, of those users are viewing mining claim maps. About 20% of those users are federal/state/local government employees that find Land Matters more useful than their internal systems. Probably another 10-15% are small exploration companies that have their own internal mapping systems (many of them get their data from me) but find Land Matters to be a quicker view of claim status while working on other projects. None of those users are going to be buying from Onyx. I know all that from personal conversations with my clients and email feedback.

I'm guessing there would be approx 50 - 100 users Onyx could pick up from the small mining community if they were to offer mining claim mapping.

The other problem for systems like Onyx is the mining claims liability issue. They can't have their users relying on out of date and inaccurate information when they put boots on the ground. There is no effective way to keep track of all those 500,000 claims in a timely manner.

Last week alone there were nearly 4,000 new claims and claim closures. The new claims typically don't show up in the system for anywhere from 120 days to six or more months after they are located. It may take the BLM as much as three years to mark a claim as closed. Add to that the fact that claims are located to the nearest square mile (section) and you have a very loose system to rely on.

The property ownership data is updated daily by the county assessors and Onyx can rely on the counties to keep track of the property ownership (and taxes) in a timely and accurate manner. The BLM not so much. In fact the BLM has only processed about 80% of all the claims in the U.S. with some states, like California, being less than 30% processed. That's a recent development in the last three years but the trend is accelerating in the wrong direction. For example 3 years ago Utah BLM was generally 95 - 100% caught up on updating claim status. Now they are dropping below 50% and soon to be below 40% up to date. Sad but true.

It's entirely possible for Onyx to provide claims mapping on their app. To provide reliable, accurate and timely claims mapping on a phone app is not possible in any form that would be profitable.

Barry

[Lead Detector]

18 minutes ago, Clay Diggins said:

There are more than 500,000 active mining claims.

There are more than 240,000 claimants in the BLM database. We can't know the exact number because the BLM has removed 93% of all claimants from public access for the last two years. Those are all the claimants that were registered with the BLM from 1977 until November 2022 when claimants were removed from the database without notice.

The vast majority of mining claims are owned by mining companies. To give you some perspective a little more than 1% of mining claims are small miner claims.

By law those mining companies have to develop their claims to remain listed on the stock exchanges. My for profit business works with a lot of those mining companies and I can tell you first hand that billions are spent each year developing these claims. Just because you didn't see them drilling, sampling or doing aerial surveys doesn't mean that the claims aren't being developed.

If the claims are proven to be "worthless" these companies immediately relinquish the claims to get the liability off their books. Many thousands of claims are closed each year by the larger companies. Last year 31,434 claims were dropped and it looks like this year more than 50,000 (about 10%) will be dropped.

Now to the actual problem of providing current mining claims mapping on a phone.

My company already provides claims mapping to many companies and organizations twice a month. If Onyx wanted to provide this info all they would have to do is acquire a license from me. I doubt they are going to do that for two reasons - lack of customers and liability.

Although the U.S. mining business is huge, third largest in the world with a quarter million highly paid employees, the number of prospectors who don't work for those big mining/exploration companies is really small.

Land Matters provides anywhere from 10,000 to 120,000+ maps a day to our users. We update those maps twice a month and they are free for all users. Many, but not all, of those users are viewing mining claim maps. About 20% of those users are federal/state/local government employees that find Land Matters more useful than their internal systems. Probably another 10-15% are small exploration companies that have their own internal mapping systems (many of them get their data from me) but find Land Matters to be a quicker view of claim status while working on other projects. None of those users are going to be buying from Onyx. I know all that from personal conversations with my clients and email feedback.

I'm guessing there would be approx 50 - 100 users Onyx could pick up from the small mining community if they were to offer mining claim mapping.

The other problem for systems like Onyx is the mining claims liability issue. They can't have their users relying on out of date and inaccurate information when they put boots on the ground. There is no effective way to keep track of all those 500,000 claims in a timely manner.

Last week alone there were nearly 4,000 new claims and claim closures. The new claims typically don't show up in the system for anywhere from 120 days to six or more months after they are located. It may take the BLM as much as three years to mark a claim as closed. Add to that the fact that claims are located to the nearest square mile (section) and you have a very loose system to rely on.

The property ownership data is updated daily by the county assessors and Onyx can rely on the counties to keep track of the property ownership (and taxes) in a timely and accurate manner. The BLM not so much. In fact the BLM has only processed about 80% of all the claims in the U.S. with some states, like California, being less than 30% processed. That's a recent development in the last three years but the trend is accelerating in the wrong direction. For example 3 years ago Utah BLM was generally 95 - 100% caught up on updating claim status. Now they are dropping below 50% and soon to be below 40% up to date. Sad but true.

It's entirely possible for Onyx to provide claims mapping on their app. To provide reliable, accurate and timely claims mapping on a phone app is not possible in any form that would be profitable.

Barry

I think you just summed it up as good as it can be. It makes alot of sense, since the great majority of claim owners are large mines and have their own software and resources.  Thank you for your input. I'm new to this and appreciate you taking the time to educate.  

[Lead Detector]

So now after being educated on the reality of a claim app, I think my next step will be to figure out how to use Google earth to its potential, with adding all the right layers, and maybe a GPS?  This should be interesting.  An old dog trying to teach himself new tricks. 

[Gold Seeker]

18 hours ago, Ndplumr said:

So now after being educated on the reality of a claim app, I think my next step will be to figure out how to use Google earth to its potential, with adding all the right layers, and maybe a GPS?  This should be interesting.  An old dog trying to teach himself new tricks. 

OR.......... just use or even better become a member of My Land Matters and use it to get all that you could do on Google Earth and more, it's all been done for you and it's updated as often as it's possible to do!!

All you have to do is learn to use it.