Silver Empire: The Forgotten Metal That Powers Modern Civilization

Published on April 11, 2025

In a world obsessed with gold and increasingly focused on rare earth elements, we've overlooked the true workhorse of the modern age: silver. This remarkable metal—once the backbone of global monetary systems—has quietly transformed into perhaps the most indispensable industrial metal of the 21st century, yet remains profoundly undervalued and misunderstood.

My book Silver Empire: The Forgotten Metal That Powers Modern Civilization reveals this extraordinary disconnect between silver's critical importance and its market perception. While investors and policymakers focus elsewhere, silver has become irreplaceable in technologies that define our modern world—from solar panels and electric vehicles to medical applications and advanced electronics.

The Dual Identity Crisis

Silver suffers from a peculiar identity crisis. Is it a precious metal or an industrial commodity? The answer is both—and this duality has led to its persistent undervaluation in markets and underappreciation in public discourse.

Unlike gold, which is primarily hoarded (less than 10% of annual gold production is used in industry), over 50% of silver is consumed in industrial applications. Yet unlike purely industrial metals such as copper or nickel, silver maintains its monetary heritage and investment appeal. This hybrid status creates a unique market dynamic found in no other metal.

The history of silver as money spans millennia—from ancient civilizations that valued it above gold to the first global reserve currency, the Spanish silver dollar. Even the U.S. dollar was backed by silver until relatively recently in historical terms. This monetary heritage continues to influence silver's market behavior, even as its industrial applications multiply exponentially.

The Technological Cornerstone

What makes silver truly irreplaceable is its unique combination of properties. It possesses:

• The highest electrical conductivity of any element
• The highest thermal conductivity of any metal
• Exceptional reflectivity of light (the highest of any metal)
• Remarkable antimicrobial properties
• Superior catalytic qualities
• Unmatched malleability and ductility

These properties make silver not merely useful but utterly essential in many of today's most important technologies. Consider just a few examples:

The Green Energy Revolution's Silver Lining

The transition to renewable energy isn't just creating demand for silver—it's utterly dependent on it. A standard silicon photovoltaic solar panel contains approximately 20 grams of silver. While this might seem negligible, multiply it by the hundreds of millions of panels being deployed globally, and the numbers become staggering.

According to the International Energy Agency, solar power generation must increase 20-fold by 2050 to meet global climate goals. This would require over 80,000 tons of silver—equivalent to nearly three years of current global production. Add in the silver needed for electric vehicles (each EV contains 25-50 grams of silver in various components) and the scale of demand becomes clear.

Chinese solar panel manufacturer Trina Solar recently announced plans to increase capacity by 25 GW, which alone will require approximately 1,500 tons of silver annually—increasing global silver demand by about 20%.

The Digital Infrastructure's Hidden Component

Every time you use a smartphone, tablet, or any electronic device, you're utilizing silver. The average smartphone contains about 0.35 grams of silver, a tablet roughly 0.7 grams, and a laptop up to 1.25 grams. Multiply this by the billions of devices in use, and you begin to understand the scale of silver's role in our digital world.

More advanced technologies depend even more heavily on silver. 5G infrastructure requires high-performance circuit boards with significantly higher silver content than previous generations. Artificial intelligence systems rely on servers packed with silver-containing components. Quantum computing, still in its infancy, is already revealing unique applications for silver's properties at the nanoscale.

The Medical Silver Bullet

While the technological applications are impressive, silver's role in healthcare might be even more crucial. Silver's antimicrobial properties—known since antiquity—have found renewed importance in an age of antibiotic resistance.

Silver nanoparticles are now used in a wide range of medical applications, from wound dressings and catheters to implantable devices and diagnostic equipment. According to Grand View Research, the silver medical materials market alone was valued at nearly $1 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow at over 6% annually through 2030.

Perhaps most promising is silver's role in combating bacterial resistance. Unlike antibiotics, microorganisms rarely develop resistance to silver, making it an increasingly valuable tool in healthcare's arsenal against superbugs.

The Great Supply Paradox

Despite silver's growing importance, we face a remarkable paradox: supply is actually decreasing even as demand surges. Three factors explain this counterintuitive situation:

The Byproduct Problem

Approximately 70% of annual silver production comes not from primary silver mines but as a byproduct of mining for other metals—primarily copper, lead, and zinc. This creates an unusual market dynamic where silver supply is largely insensitive to silver prices and instead depends on the economics of these base metals.

When base metal prices decline, mining operations reduce output regardless of silver demand, constraining silver supply. This indirect relationship between silver prices and production creates structural inelasticity in the supply chain.

Peak Silver

The data suggests we may have already passed "peak silver" in terms of mining output. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, approximately 1.74 million tons of silver have been mined throughout human history, with over 80% extracted just in the past century.

Remaining known reserves are estimated at around 550,000 tons—a figure that, at current consumption rates, would be exhausted within decades. Unlike gold, which is mainly recycled and preserved, much of the silver used in industrial applications is effectively lost forever, dispersed in such tiny amounts that recovery is economically unfeasible.

The Investment Deficit

New silver discoveries have declined dramatically, and investment in exploration has been minimal compared to other metals. The current market price of silver simply doesn't justify major exploration expenditures, creating a dangerous feedback loop where insufficient investment today leads to supply constraints tomorrow.

This supply paradox is reflected in market data. According to The Silver Institute, the world has experienced a physical silver deficit for the past five years. In 2023, this shortfall reached 4,500 tons, jumping to 8,200 tons in 2024—nearly double in just one year.

The Price Manipulation Saga

If silver is so critically important and facing supply constraints, why does it remain so undervalued? The answer lies in one of the financial world's most controversial topics: price manipulation in the silver market.

To understand this manipulation, we must examine the structure of modern commodities markets, particularly the overwhelming dominance of "paper silver" over physical metal. For every ounce of physical silver, there exist hundreds of paper claims in the form of futures contracts and other derivatives.

Throughout my research, I uncovered numerous instances of suspicious trading patterns and coordinated selling that defied normal market behavior—from the Hunt Brothers saga of 1980 to the more recent "Silver Thursday" events and the puzzling activities surrounding Bear Stearns' collapse in 2008.

Perhaps most telling is the data showing that the eight largest commercial banks or market makers consistently maintain massive short positions in silver. Since 2014, these players have controlled more than 50% of the entire futures market, giving them extraordinary influence over price discovery.

The legal proceedings against JP Morgan—resulting in a $920 million settlement in 2020 for precious metals manipulation—provide official confirmation of what silver investors have long suspected. As then-Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski stated: "For more than eight years, JP Morgan's precious metals traders participated in a fraudulent scheme with other market participants, including thousands of instances of illegal trading aimed at increasing profits and preventing losses."

The Coming Silver Shock

The confluence of surging industrial demand, constrained supply, and artificially suppressed prices has created the conditions for what could become one of the most dramatic commodity price readjustments in modern history.

Several factors suggest this readjustment may be approaching:

• Physical demand is reaching record levels, with government mints reporting unprecedented shortages
• Major industrial nations are securing supply, with India importing a record 9,500 tons in 2022—37% of global annual production
• The gold-to-silver ratio remains at historically extreme levels (85:1 versus a historical average of 40:1 and geological ratio of 16:1)
• Central banks are diversifying reserves away from dollars, potentially returning to precious metals

When investor awareness finally aligns with the physical reality of silver's importance, the effect could be explosive. Unlike larger markets such as gold, silver's relatively small market size (annual production value of roughly $30 billion) means that even modest shifts in capital flows can cause dramatic price movements.

Beyond Investment: Strategic National Interest

Silver's importance transcends mere investment consideration—it has become a matter of strategic national security. Countries that secure access to silver will maintain technological advantages in fields ranging from renewable energy to defense systems.

This explains why China has become the world's largest silver importer, why Russia has classified its silver reserves as a state secret since 2018, and why countries like India are dramatically increasing silver imports despite challenging economic conditions.

The United States, which was once the world's largest silver producer, now depends heavily on imports. This vulnerability has not gone unnoticed by the Pentagon, which in 2022 added silver to its list of "critical materials" necessary for national defense.

As renowned investor Jim Rogers observed: "Silver is the most undervalued asset in the world. It's the only commodity that today costs less than it did 50 years ago."

The Silver Paradox: Prepare Now

The paradox of silver is that by the time mainstream investors and policymakers recognize its true importance, the opportunity for preparation will have largely passed. As with many commodity cycles, the move from undervalued to fairly valued (or overvalued) often happens with breathtaking speed.

For forward-thinking investors, businesses dependent on silver inputs, and policymakers concerned with strategic resources, the time to develop a silver strategy is before the market fully recognizes the fundamental disconnect between silver's price and its value.

In Silver Empire, I provide a comprehensive framework for understanding both the physical silver market and its financial derivatives, offering practical strategies for navigating what could become one of the most significant commodity stories of the next decade.

The world is belatedly recognizing that the energy transition, technological advancement, and medical innovation all depend on critical metals. Silver stands at the center of this new reality—the forgotten metal that quietly powers our modern world, waiting for its rightful recognition.

Share This Article

Available Now