The horse is dead...
All the arguing is pointless. Exploration companies and startup mining ventures are highly speculative by nature. Anybody who invests in them risks 100% of their investment. If you lost a significant portion of your investment portfolio on Nevada Copper, you paid for a valuable lesson. Move on and be smarter next time. These kinds of mining investment are like buying lottery tickets. It's possible to win big, but more likely you'll just be left with a worthless piece of paper. You can be knowledgeable about geology (as I am, a bit) to improve your odds of picking the right numbers, but it just depends on how the balls fall.
p.s. I confess that despite repeated attempts I've never had a successful mining investment in the U.S., although I've had some decent success in Canada, and even better success in Africa. Mining is simply not as attractive an investment in the U.S. market compared to tech, pharma, real estate, etc. That's going to have to change, if we are going to thrive in the invevitable deglobalization that appears to be imminent. I hope the next President and Congress can recognize the problem.