What if the Congo cuts its cobalt export quota deeper?
Kinshasa cutting the 2027 cobalt quota below 96.6kt deepens battery-grade hydroxide scarcity — the direct move is cobalt prices and battery/EV-supply-chain cost higher; the cascade's broad China-tariff template (Alibaba, yuan, semis) is mis-mapped to a DRC supply curb. Rhymes with the 2018 cobalt spike to ~$95k/t on DRC supply fear and the 2025 DRC export suspension that doubled prices. Forward angle: LFP chemistry's rise has cut cobalt intensity since 2018, so the squeeze hits high-nickel NMC and aerospace alloys; China (CMOC/Glencore offtake) controls midstream, so the leverage flows through Beijing, not against it.
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The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 6–18 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. Kinshasa cuts the 2027 cobalt export quota below 96,600 tonnes, deepening battery-grade hydroxide scarcity worldwide. :: The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Industrial demand ▲ · Geopolitical risk ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.