Silver rises 9% to hit fresh record high | Hacker News Reader

Silver rises 9% to hit fresh record high

reuters.com

29 pointskaycebasques27 comments

China is the world's second largest producer of silver, after Mexico and ahead of Peru.

It is introducing licensing for export of silver starting on 1 January 2026.

There is speculation that the new regulations will favor a few large companies, slow the flow of exports, and provide a mechanism for the government to impose explicit 'critical mineral' export controls on silver in the future.

The thing I'm trying to determine is if this is another pump and dump or the the Dollar losing it's reserve currency status. Both seem equally likely to me right now.

Not to be a downer but there's also "both" as an option.

There's actually a 3rd option, possibly concurrent with the others, which is that silver usage has suddenly dramatically increased and the new demand has forced a higher equilibrium price, but I don't know if that's happening here.

What is the increasing industrial demand?

I have a couple kilos of silver and it is a bit mind-boggling to check the price once a week and see it go up 2-3x what a year long term deposit would.

There doesn't seem to be much of a (new) demand: https://silverinstitute.org/silver-supply-demand/

This could just be speculators driving up the price...

I don't think there is much additional industrial demand, it is just speculation due to the state of world economies and governments not holding much trust these days and people expecting depressions or currency collapses in the near future. It just a cheaper version of holding gold.

No, it’s a supply side issue. There aren’t as many silver only mines out there anymore, so ramping up production to meet demand is difficult.

Most silver extraction is actually done in copper or gold mines. But you can’t ramp up silver production in those mines because the silver output is actually a waste product from the primary metal being extracted in those mines.

Demand is rising but silver supply is relatively inelastic, resulting in the price going up.

But where is that demand coming from? Silver prices didn't go up when we switched to silver solder. The only reason for silver to have been rising in the last few years is speculative demand because there are no new large scale applications or scaled uses that line up with price changes. Yes demand is up, but not from using that much more silver in things, but to hold onto silver as an investment or to hedge against inflation. Just like how golds industrial value is not nearly as high as its speculative value, but industrial users still have to pay the price that speculators are paying to get it.

What about PVs and power electronics? My understanding is that TOPCon PVs use substantially more silver per watt than previous generations. China decided to stop exporting silver and there is currently a substantial premium for physical delivery in Shanghai vs cash settlement in COMEX..

In 2014, the solar sector only accounted for around 11 percent of silver demand. That rose to 29 percent in 2024.

According to a research paper by scientists at the University of New South Wales, solar manufacturers will likely require over 20 percent of the current annual silver supply by 2027. By 2050, solar panel

source: https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2025/12/15/silver-industria...

It’s probably all of these factors, but price is going up due to supply inelasticity.

It’s similar to oil: demand is what it is, and even if it doesn’t fluctuate much, a refinery exploding or political instability in a producer nation can cause prices to rise by large amounts, even if supply only drops by a few hundred thousand barrels per year.

In the 1980’s when the Hunt brothers tried to corner the market, households responded by liquidating their Sterling silver and other silver items. That’s ultimately why their strategy failed. Today that domestic source of supply is much smaller, contributing even more to supply inelasticity.

This is more of a supply story than a demand story.

Copper isn’t exactly cheap and gold definitely isn’t either, so you’d still expect those mines to ramp up production along with the associated silver.

When copper or gold are cheap that’s when you wouldn’t expect those mines to step up to the plate just to address silver demand.

The silver output is very unpredictable. They’re targeting areas with high concentrations of the metals they’re after, and any silver extracted during that activity is incidental. It’s not as simple as “just increase production”.

Cheaper by the ounce,

or cheaper meaning “undervalued by comparison”?

I've seen speculative claims that it will be essential for battery anodes. But I have no idea what quantities are involved, and whether it reflects real industrial demand or is wishcasting by rock aficionados.

I know the article mentions increasing industrial demand without any other details, but I was under the impression precious metals were going up as investors were trying to hedge against uncertainty with the current market

I am under that impression too. But why is silver doing so much better than gold? Can anyone explain?

The silver market is around 10 times smaller than gold. When gold does well(in this case primarily due to central bank buying), usually silver catches up and outperforms gold as speculative interest takes hold. Silver has higher volatility compared to gold, although both can be quite volatile in a bull market.

The silver paste used in photovoltaics is about 90% silver IIRC. There have been many months of a big expansion of photovoltaic manufacturing in China for export.

Trading volume was very high. SLV had 138M today versus 24-78M range over the last month. https://www.investing.com/etfs/ishares-silver-trust-historic...

Therefore... what? What should we conclude from that data?

Sometimes you get a big price swing but it was on a low volume day. In those cases it's less interesting because it could be just one big buyer pushing the market around. The fact that it was nearly a double digit jump on a single day, and with high volume, is much more newsworthy. It means that a lot of people agreed that silver should be priced 9% higher than it was yesterday. With low volume, the price jump has a higher chance of being a fluke/noise from some uninformed/fringe market participants pricing the asset in silly ways. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pricediscovery.asp

That's quite clear. Thank you.

Spot Silver has decoupled from Shanghai India and London. It’s diverged to ~$8.

Right now is an incredible time for miners. Diesel is at multi-year lows, bulk ocean freight is relatively inexpensive, and almost the entire metals index is soaring. Through happenstance, I know someone at Bridgestone's mine truck tire division, and they are having one of their best years ever. Wonder if we will see $1m salaries for explosive engineers like we did in ~2010

Yes mining and everything supporting it is booming.

A better title would be "The US Dollar drops 9% in value again".

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