No, it is not that tough to figure out. The technology does not work, and there is almost no gold in the tailings.
As for the "apparently new cutting edge technology that they have rights/patents to" - it is not cutting edge, nor would it work on the tailings from the old Tennessee Mine. I am actually surprised that a potential buyer (Magnolia) would even bother making it a condition of the buy-out that the technology be proven. If they have intentions of taking over and producing gold, they should just talk to a few (real) mining engineers and save themselves a bunch of time and trouble. If they have intentions of continuing the sham that Hondo started a year ago, why even put those conditions on the buy-out?