Integra Gold Launches $1 Million Challenge to Find Next Gold Discovery

Integra Gold Launches $1 Million Challenge to Find Next Gold Discovery

Today Integra Gold launched the world’s largest crowdsourcing challenge related to mining to find the next large gold discovery.

The company recently acquired a treasure trove of data through its acquisition of the Sigma-Lamaque Mine and Milling Facility near its Lamaque South discovery. The six terabytes (6,000 GB) of data spans 75 years and originates from the exploration and production efforts of Teck, Placer Dome, and other companies that worked these historical properties.

The data includes over 30,000 historical drill holes, 500,000 gold assays, and hundreds of kilometres of underground workings.

Overall, both the Sigma and Lamaque mines produced 4.5 million oz of gold each. However, here lies the opportunity that Integra sees: the Sigma Mine was more than 700m shallower than the Lamaque Mine, despite producing the same amount of gold. Could there be more gold underneath?

If gold was discovered in this new contest, then it wouldn’t be the first time for Integra. Just to the south, they discovered a deposit in 2010 that has over 1 million oz (3 g/t cutoff) at a high-grade of 7.1 g/t Au (Indicated). This is part of the reason that they believe in the potential of the overall complex.

Integra hopes to attract the expertise of those in academia, geology, the mining sector and many other disciplines to interpret the data. The company is partnering with HeroX, a company co-founded by the legendary XPRIZE founder Peter Diamandis, to produce the competition.

“The Gold Rush Challenge follows in the incredibly successful footsteps of the Goldcorp Challenge and the Ansari XPRIZE competition,” says XPRIZE CEO and HeroX Co-founder, Peter H. Diamandis. “We live in a world of incredible cognitive surplus and your ability to tap into brilliance is now unparalleled. By utilizing the HeroX platform, Integra Gold is paving the way for significant innovation in the mining industry by encouraging collaboration and openness.”

For more about the contest, stay tuned to Integra Gold’s website.