[daedrdev]

Silver has plenty of industrial uses. Very little has changed in industry to cause demand or supply shifts to match the massive price swings. Thus a lot of this is probably meme investors gambling

[fdr]

Fun fact about silver, besides its heavy industrial footprint, which you mentioned: the supply is dominated by Mexico. There have been some, uh, erratic words about Mexico from the people in the position to affect trade policy and foreign policy.

[caminante]

"Dominated" doesn't sound right.

Mexico is ~25% of supply. Mexico, China, Peru account for 50%. The Top 10 countries account for 80%.

[xingped]

China decided to subject silver to export controls similar to rare earth metals. That's one of the big reasons for the silver growth.

[anabab]

But why is silver with export restrictions (Shanghai) trading above silver without said restrictions?

[the_fall]

> Silver has plenty of industrial uses.

About one third of this demand (photographic film and paper) more or less evaporated in the 2000s. You don't see that on the price chart, so I don't think you can seriously argue that the price is dictated by industrial uses.

[pfdietz]

Now look at what has happened to demand for silver for photovoltaic cells.

[carlosjobim]

Silver which is a physical and exists in reality, you call a meme?

While dollars, euros, and all other currencies are all imaginary within databases and don't exist in reality.

[sigwinch]

I would say that the late 1970s reflexive silver bubble revealed magical thinking about silver which isn’t common with fiat. We know that big names rode the bubble on the way up, and made more on the way down. I think we can talk about meme pricing in the same way.

[impossiblefork]

There's debt in dollars and euros, so people actually need to obtain dollars, euros etc. to avoid losing their collateral.

That isn't the case with silver or gold, for the most part, and what are you really going to use them for, now that there are so many excellent rust-resistant alloys?

[chaostheory]

The price of paper silver doesn’t match the price of buying the actual commodity, so it’s more likely that it’s being manipulated by “market makers”