What if sodium-ion batteries undercut lithium for grid storage?
Cheap sodium-ion grid storage undercuts lithium; the genuine reads are lithium/spodumene lower and a copper bid as storage buildouts scale, not an NVDA/robotics rally — the mapped robot_productivity/AI leg is a stretch. Closest rhyme is LFP's displacement of nickel-cobalt chemistries, which crushed those metal premia. Transmission: hits lithium miners (Albemarle/SQM) hardest while helping utility-storage integrators. Forward angle: sodium-ion energy density still favors stationary over EV, so lithium's auto demand is less threatened than headlines imply.
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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 1–3 years 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 mixed shock. A cheap sodium-ion cell reaches grid-storage mass production, undercutting lithium and reshaping the storage market. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Industrial demand ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.