Confession time:

In 2011, when silver was soaring, I wrote for a little blog called Silver Doctors under a pen name…

Mr. M.

Back then, the Silver Doctors crew was a ragtag group with keyboards and wild theories—not the earnest merchants they are today at SD Bullion.

Since 2012, SD Bullion has been recognized multiple times on the Inc. 5000 list for fastest-growing U.S. companies…

Including a three-year growth rate of 2,410%, landing at #177 in 2017.

I, of course, was long gone by then.

But I learned one thing in those early days…

You don’t buy silver because it’s polite.

You buy it because it’s volatile, opinionated, irreplaceable, and every so often, it turns into the drunk uncle at the wedding who rips his shirt off and starts singing “We Are the Champions” in the middle of the dance floor.

Right now, silver’s quietly nursing a drink in the corner.

But I can see the wild look in its eye. That same look it had before it jumped across the table last time.

Here’s a bunch of things that could flip the switch.

(I could do 99, but let’s settle for half that: 9. Math teachers hate me.)

1. The Currency Crisis Nobody’s Ready For

Global debt just hit $324 trillion.

That’s more than 3× world GDP, meaning the world owes three years of total output.

Reinhart & Rogoff’s This Time Is Different looked at sovereign debt crises over the last 200+ years. 

They found that, historically, high debt-to-GDP ratios often (with few caveats) lead to one of three things: rapid inflation, financial repression, or default/restructuring.

Probabilities suggest: something will snap somewhere. Probably in several somewheres. Gold, cryptos, and silver will benefit.

In the 1970s, silver went up nearly 800% when inflation went ballistic. If gold gets re-priced in a monetary “reset” (say, $5,000+), silver’s like the little brother that insists on tagging along…

And ends up outrunning him.

2. The Green Energy “Silver Shock”

Your solar panels and EVs aren’t running on fairy dust.

They’re running on silver. A lot of silver.

In 2024, solar ate almost 200 million ounces. Also, every EV contains enough silver to make 1–2 one-ounce coins, and automakers are targeting tens of millions of EVs per year. Roughly 9–12 million ounces are locked up in our pockets every year in our smartphones.

Between solar (~200 Moz), EVs (~48–97 Moz), smartphones (~9–12 Moz), general electronics (~135 Moz), brazing and solders (~45 Moz), ethylene oxide catalysts (~7 Moz), medical (~5 Moz), and other uses (~12 Moz), industry alone eats up roughly 461–513 million ounces of silver a year—about 55% of global mine supply before jewelry, silverware, or investment demand even enter the picture.

Meanwhile, governments keep cranking up renewable targets like a teenager and his subwoofers—and they’re both going to blow the speakers.

Except the speakers in this case is the global silver supply.

3. Peak Silver: The Mine Supply Squeeze

Global silver production is currently around 820–830 million troy ounces per year.

But here’s the thing about silver mines: most of them aren’t really silver mines.

They’re “Oh, look, we also found some silver” mines. Around 70% of silver is just a byproduct of mining other metals.

This creates a paradox: silver’s not especially rare in nature, but the amount you can get each year is relatively fixed and unresponsive in the short term.

Put a different way…

Even though it’s mined in many countries, its status as a byproduct metal makes it more vulnerable to certain kinds of near-term supply shocks.

Meanwhile, all around the world, production’s flatlining, ore grades are falling, and no one’s finding big new deposits. Above-ground stockpiles are melting away like ice cubes on a dashboard in Death Valley.

Keep that up, and you’ll have far more buyers than ounces. Economics 101 says that ends with higher prices. Economics 102 says it ends with ridiculously higher prices.

And we’re only on #3.

4. Geopolitical Shock Therapy

Half the world’s silver comes from Latin America.

If Mexico or Peru decides to hike royalties, nationalize mines, or just takes a political vacation into chaos… good luck getting your hands on supply.

And when the world’s on fire—war, sanctions, supply chain seizures—people stop caring about 401(k) growth rates and start hoarding shiny things.

Silver’s the “poor man’s gold,” and in a crisis, the poor man shows up early.

5. The Gold Boom’s Side Hustle

In every gold bull market worth writing about, silver rides in on a motorcycle, revs the engine, drinks the whole bottle of champagne, and gives everyone a good story to tell.

In 1980, gold hit $850 and silver sprinted to $50—a 17:1 ratio. Adjusted for inflation, that’s $240–$360 in today’s money.

From 2000 to 2011, gold rose ~550% and silver rose ~1,000%, from $4 to $49.

The gold-to-silver ratio right now? About 80:1. If gold takes off, silver could collapse that ratio like a folding chair in a WWE match.

6. WallStreetSilver 2.0

Remember GameStop? Imagine that, but with coins and bars.

In 2021, Reddit’s silver crowd at WallStreetSilver shoved almost $1 billion into SLV in a single day. Dealers sold out. Prices popped.

That fizzled, but the community didn’t.

They’ve been stacking, plotting, and memeing ever since. All it takes is one viral post, one spark, and the internet’s silver hoarders could crash into a market thinner than a vegan leather jacket.

7. The Elon Musk X-Factor

Musk follows WallStreetSilver on Twitter.

He’s joked about getting into mining. But in every joke, there’s a truth. He needs silver for Teslas, solar roofs, Starlink, probably for that Mars colony too.

Conspiracy corner (AKA, my brain) says he pumped Dogecoin in 2021 to distract retail traders from squeezing silver.

Is it true? Who knows.

But imagine the chaos if Elon ever buys a silver mine.

8. The Big Short Unwind

Banks have been caught—literally fined hundreds of millions—for spoofing precious metals markets.

JPMorgan’s $920 million ticket in 2020 was basically a public service announcement: “Yes, we’ve been messing with metals.”

The DOJ’s announcement made it clear this wasn’t a one-off—it was years of systematic activity across multiple traders and desks, with thousands of incidents logged.

Meanwhile, physical stockpiles are finite—if a major futures player ever fails to deliver metal, it could trigger a run on the COMEX. We nearly saw tremors of this in early 2021 when SLV’s sudden 34 Moz purchase led some to ask where the metal would come from.

If large shorts ever get caught in a true squeeze, they’ll be forced to buy physical at any price.

9. The Narrative Supercycle

The biggest catalyst might not be mines, Musk, or macro.

It’s the story.

Once silver stops being “that thing grandma bought in the ‘80s” and becomes “the irreplaceable metal for the future,” the re-rating could be violent.

ETF managers are already talking triple-digit silver. Governments could call it a “strategic metal” and start stockpiling.

The market’s tiny—the whole year’s mine supply is worth less than what Apple spends on R&D.

In fact, Apple could buy all the silver mined in a year with less than one quarter’s profit. A single sovereign wealth fund—like Norway’s, at $1.4 trillion—could corner the market with a rounding error in their portfolio.

Even a mid-sized nation’s foreign currency reserves could mop up a year’s supply without breaking a sweat.

It wouldn’t take much for any number of nations or megacorps to wake up and say, “We need silver. Now.”

Hi, Ho Silver

Individually, these are big.

Together, they’re the financial equivalent of strapping a shopping cart to a rocket.

You don’t know exactly which way it’ll go—but chances are it’s up.