I have been assisting the company with raising the capital it needs to manage its first institutional stablecoin positions at scale. The company has roughly US$1.6 billion committed to its on-chain market-making protocol.

The biggest challenge for investors considering coming into the stablecoin universe for the first time is understanding (and most importatnly, believing) how large the volumes are, and how big the yield can be.

ArkenYield projects a target 20% Annual Percentage Yield (APY) on institutional positions. In other words, the principle doubles every five years.

That is a monstrous claim, and one that immediately raises questions of legitimacy around the whole company. The reality is that this is a modest number, and reporting anything lower would constitute a misleading statement.

The reason such a big yield occurs is that a) there are so few active market makers in the space, due to the compound …

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Layer 1: The T-Bill Baseline (3.5–5.5% APY)

The floor of any rational stablecoin yield framework is the risk-free rate, currently anchored around short-duration US Treasury yields. This layer is accessible on-chain through tokenised money market products such as Ondo Finance’s USDY, Mountain Protocol’s USDM, and the Sky Savings Rate (currently approximately 4.0% APY via sUSDS). These products offer the most legible yield source available: off-chain government debt coupons, reflected on-chain through accruing token mechanics. For institutions, this layer maps cleanly to existing treasury mental models; it is closer in economic logic to a money market fund than to an idle stablecoin balance, though the legal structure, custody model, and redemption mechanics are not identical. The key operational due diligence points are fund structure, administrator identity, redemption windows, and any allowlisting or transfer restrictions.

What matters here is that the yield floor exists and is real. An institution holding vanilla USDC or USDT earns nothing on the idle balance. Deploying the same capital into a T-bill-backed wrapper earns 3.5–5.5% depending on current rate conditions, but with a different mix of issuer, custody, liquidity, and legal risk than holding dollars in a bank account or idle stablecoins. The opportunity cost of inaction at this layer is measurable and compounds across a large portfolio for mandates that can accept those tradeoffs.

Layer 2: Onchain Money Markets (3–8% APY)

The next layer is overcollateralised lending, where borrowers post crypto collateral and pay interest for access to stablecoin liquidity. Aave V3 typically offers 3–6% APY on USDC across its major markets, driven by utilisation rates. Morpho Blue, which uses isolated permissionless lending markets with vault curators allocating capital on top, often delivers 4–8% on equivalent exposures because curators can optimise allocation across multiple markets simultaneously, compressing the spread between borrow and supply rates. The mechanism is directly analogous to credit markets: borrowers pay because they need liquidity for leverage, hedging, or market-making operations. When borrow demand is high, rates spike. When demand cools, rates compress.

The critical point for institutional allocators is that this yield source is real economic activity, not protocol emissions. The transparency is also genuinely useful: anyone can verify utilisation rates, liquidation parameters, and outstanding loan books in real time. Aave recently surpassed $40 billion in TVL with over $1 trillion in cumulative loans originated, providing a meaningful track record for risk assessment.

Layer 3: Yield-Bearing Stablecoins as Collateral (the Capital Efficiency Layer)

A structural innovation that many institutional allocators have yet to operationalise is the use of yield-bearing stablecoins, tokens like sUSDS, syrupUSDC, and ONyc, as collateral to borrow additional capital for redeployment. This is still leverage, but it is typically spread-enhancing leverage rather than outright directional leverage: the collateral earns yield while simultaneously backing a loan, potentially reducing the net cost of borrowing to near zero or below when the spread is favourable.

Maple Finance’s syrupUSDC, for example, was deployed on Base in January 2026 and rapidly onboarded to Aave V3 with an E-Mode LTV of 90%, meaning allocators can borrow up to 90 cents on every dollar of syrupUSDC held while the collateral continues generating institutional credit yields of 5–9%. The Aave-Maple integration had its initial $50M deposit cap filled rapidly, signalling strong institutional demand for this structure. Similar dynamics apply to sUSDS on Aave V3 Ethereum and Morpho Blue.

Layer 4: CLMM Liquidity Provision (5–20% APY)

Concentrated Liquidity Market Maker pools allow LPs to provide stablecoin liquidity within a defined price range, capturing a higher proportion of swap fees than traditional AMMs. For stablecoin-to-stablecoin pairs, USDC/USDT and USDC/USDS, the price range is narrow by design, making range management relatively simple. Protocols like Aerodrome on Base and Orca on Solana run stablecoin pools generating 5–20% APY depending on volume. The variability reflects how tightly swap fees track trading activity: high-volatility periods generate more volume and therefore more fees, even for stable pairs.

The institutional consideration here is emissions versus organic fee yield. Many stablecoin pools carry liquidity mining incentives in the form of governance tokens, which can significantly inflate displayed APYs but compress or disappear when programs change. The question that matters for long-term capital is what the organic fee yield looks like stripped of incentives, typically 2–5% on deep stablecoin pools, with incentives layering additional returns that should be treated as transient.

Layer 5: Delta-Neutral Basis Trading (8–20% APY, regime-dependent)

The highest-yield layer that comes closest to market-neutral in directional terms is delta-neutral basis trading: holding a spot long while shorting an equivalent perpetual futures position, collecting the funding rate paid by leveraged longs to shorts when market sentiment is bullish. At a quoted 0.01% funding rate per 8 hours, a reasonable mid-cycle baseline on a venue like Hyperliquid, the annualised yield on the short leg is approximately 10.95%. During peak bull market conditions, quoted rates can sustain 0.05–0.10% per interval, pushing annualised yields into the 50–100%+ range. During bear markets or sideways consolidation, funding can go negative and the strategy becomes a net cost.

This regime-dependency is the most important thing to understand about basis trading. The yield is real when it exists, but it is not structural in the way that T-bill yield or lending interest is. Effective capital deployment at this layer requires active monitoring, clear entry and exit triggers, and robust execution infrastructure. It is not a passive hold.

Layer 6: Institutional Direct Lending (10–15% APY)

The highest-yield layer with the most durable cashflow source is direct lending to institutional borrowers, market makers, trading firms, and crypto-native financial institutions under structured credit agreements. In practice these borrowers require access to stablecoin liquidity for market-making, hedging, arbitrage, and treasury operations, and bilateral or club-style facilities can yield 10–15% depending on tenor, structure, collateralisation, and counterparty quality. This layer demands institutional-grade credit infrastructure: counterparty due diligence, legal documentation, collateral management, and custody. It is not accessible through a protocol interface. It is the domain of dedicated capital allocators with the operational infrastructure to execute and monitor structured credit.

The Stack in Practice

A well-constructed institutional stablecoin portfolio does not live at a single layer. It is a portfolio of yield engines, sized according to their risk-adjusted return, liquidity profile, and fit within the mandate. The baseline is often the T-bill layer for mandates that can accept wrapper and redemption complexity. Above that, the allocation decision becomes a function of how much complexity and risk an institution is prepared to manage operationally.

The consistent double-digit returns that sophisticated stablecoin allocators have demonstrated in 2025–2026 come not from finding a single high-APY venue, but from running this full stack with discipline, maintaining the yield floor while deploying opportunistically into higher layers when conditions justify it, and pulling back when they do not. Understanding the mechanics of each layer is the prerequisite for that kind of portfolio construction.

This is precisely the work that ArkenYield was built to do on behalf of institutional clients. Managing stablecoin capital across multiple yield layers, chains, and market regimes requires infrastructure, protocol-level expertise, and active risk management that most treasuries are not equipped to run in-house. The yield stack is well-understood. Executing it well is the hard part.

Sources

1. DefiLlama

2. Ondo Finance’s USDY

3. Mountain Protocol’s USDM

4. Sky Savings Rate

5. Aave V3

6. Morpho Blue

7. syrupUSDC

8. Aerodrome on Base

9. Hyperliquid

10. ArkenYield

The interview is a “first” on many levels.

Its the first time I’ve published an interview that went over an hour. Miraculaously, a significant percentage of viewers are watching the whole think….and for good reason: If what Kevin is saying is true, there may be a tremendous opportunity for investors in Hydrograph Clean Power (CSE:HG).

To hear Kevin explain it, Hydrograph has the potential to earn “billions and billions” on yet-to-be-commercialized graphene technology. His intensity and conviction - and his track record - make this interview worth the time to listen to. NOTE: Hydrograph and Kevin Bambrough had no financial contribution to the production and publication of this video. It was sponsored by Military Metals Corp,(CSE:MILI, OTCQB: MILIF) who is developing the 3rd largest antimony deposit on Earth. The interview with CEO Scott Eldridge is included below as well.

And if you haven’t already, check out Military Metals Corp (who is a client of ours):

The ABA said “CEA studied the wrong question on stablecoin ‘yield’ and community banks”, and that the contentious issue was “whether allowing yield on payment stablecoins will accelerate deposit migration — especially from community banks — raising funding costs and reducing local credit.”

The traditional banking lobby’s position that yield should be banned entirely by congress to protect capital flight from community banks is just as misguided as the CEA’s study of stablecoins’ effect on lending.

The entire motivation behind the emergence of the digital banking industry is precisely because traditional banks have become so egregiously predatory with the cost of their services - especially lending - that

So yes, as the ABA article states, “The contested scenario is whether allowing yield on payment stablecoins will accelerate deposit migration — especially from community banks — raising funding costs and reducing local credit.”

It will. And it should.

Enlisting congress to ban yield by competitive stablecoins is an authoritarian move that undermines the very character of capitalism, which stipulates that a better product at a better price will always displace incumbent category leaders if they fail to adjust their offering to the new competitive landscape.

The reality is that if stablecoin holders earn better interest on their deposits from stablecoin issuers than they do from traditional banks, there should be nothing standing in their way…its a free country, isn’t it?

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Which is kind of ironic, since the relentless bombing and battling is driving the price and supply side deficit in Antimony.

In this interview with MMC CEO Scott Eldridge, he talks about the path to production for the company’s Trojárová Project in Western Slovakia and the significance of the mine to Europe’s defence infrastructure.

James West: Hey everybody, welcome back. My next guest is Scott Eldridge. He’s the CEO of Military Metals Corporation, trades on the CSE under the symbol MILI and in the United States under the symbol MILIF. Scott, welcome.

Scott Eldridge: Hi James, it’s great to be here.

James West: What is the overview? What are the main features of the mineral resource estimate?

Scott Eldridge: Right, so our flagship asset is located in Slovakia and it’s called Triorova. Secondary to that, we do hold an international portfolio all in NATO countries, so we also have antimony projects in Canada and the US. But as I said, Slovakia is our flagship asset. When we acquired this project going back about 20 months ago, it had a Soviet-era resource at the time. Our promise to the shareholders was that we would do the necessary work to convert that to an NI 43-101 resource, and we’ve absolutely delivered on that. The results of the modern compliant resource are significantly better than the original Soviet resource from several decades ago. We’ve now delivered a resource that contains about 67,000 tons of antimony in the ground plus a very interesting gold byproduct where there’s about 220,000 ounces of gold. This puts us on the upper echelon of publicly listed companies that own antimony assets. To our knowledge, this is now the third largest primary antimony deposit in the world, and it’s now on the list of companies that include Perpetua and Larvoto—companies that are significantly larger than us. We’re very proud to have delivered this resource and we’re also very excited to get on with the next steps, which would be to go into a PEA.

James West: Sure. And just for those who might not really understand what antimony is used for, what are the primary uses for the metal?

Scott Eldridge: Right. So what we’re seeing in the headlines these days is the pillar of demand that covers the military and defense industry. There are no known substitutes or viable substitutes for antimony as it applies to the defense industry; it’s used in 300 different munitions and primers. It’s also used in night vision goggles for soldiers. The fire retardant side of the industry is the biggest piece of demand that carries over to the military side where it’s used as a compound in soldiers’ uniforms. Basically, it’s the defense industry, the fire retardant industry, and third would be the solar glass panel industry, where antimony is used to suppress the bubbling effect in glass panels. It’s also used in nuclear reactors as well. So unlike other critical minerals, it’s not a one-trick pony in terms of demand. It does have fairly widespread demand pillars. But what we’re seeing right now in terms of the component experiencing the most significant increase in demand is definitely the military side. With the current activities and different wars we’re seeing around the world, global inventories of munitions are drastically decreasing. Besides resupplying, there’s also going to be a stockpile building process, and this is placing a very significant long-term picture together for any defense minerals. We’re probably in the first 12 months here of basically a tsunami of capital coming into the defense metal industry. Now that we’re a company that has a resource, making that transition out of exploration into development is going to open up significant funding opportunities for our company.

James West: Sure. How critical is antimony, and how relevant is it to being essentially the only supply of antimony on the European continent?

Scott Eldridge: Right. As far as we know, we are the only modern compliant resource on the continent of Europe. That gives us an opportunity to stand out. Based on our resource, we have a “back of the envelope” estimate of what our production profile looks like. We feel we could supply about one-third of the annual demand for the European market, which is also a very similar number in the US to what Perpetua could deliver to the domestic market there. This is a very valuable asset to the European Union, and we are being approached by several different potential offtake partners and financiers within Europe. This is a tremendous opportunity to stand out because we’re the only competition on the continent.

James West: What is the process of extracting and concentrating antimony for a product? Is it a complicated huge smelting process or is it relatively straightforward?

Scott Eldridge: On the mining side, it’s relatively simple—similar to what you would see in the copper space where you would have a flotation mill that allows you to produce an antimony concentrate. From there, it does have to be further smelted and refined. Most of that global concentration is, of course, sitting in China as everyone knows. But what we would like to do is look at a hydrometallurgical process that would allow us to produce antimony ingot on site. The goal of the companies and stakeholders involved with European projects is that we would like to design the project so the antimony would never get shipped to China. The mining, processing, and end consumption would all be in Europe. Our product would essentially never touch a ship.

James West: Okay then. In a best-case scenario, how soon until you’re able to supply antimony to the European marketplace?

Scott Eldridge: Yes, we’d like to move the project forward as quickly as possible. We have a very interesting advantage that other mineral projects don’t see because this was essentially a brownfield site with that historical resource. There had been 63 holes as well as a production adit excavated into the hillside, but the mine was never put in production when the Cold War ended in ‘92. Fast forward to today, we feel there’s probably three or four years’ worth of work and more than $15 million worth of capital already sunk into this project. That would allow us to basically go from one drill permit immediately into a resource and then a PEA. Beyond that, we’re looking at a feasibility study. But having said all that, James, that’s not necessarily important to our shareholders. There’s an inflection point here of value on the table where we’ve delivered and de-risked the project. This doesn’t need to go into production immediately for our shareholders to do well, but it’s definitely going to attract a lot of attention from strategic partners like offtakers, metals traders, and European institutional money. We’re probably still two years away from production, but the value proposition in front of us is still very strong in the short, medium, and long term.

James West: I got to think that the European defensive vulnerability, in the case of potentially losing a relationship with NATO, has got to be one of the main drivers of the conversation around the importance of antimony in the current context of global volatility.

Scott Eldridge: Yes, we’ve definitely seen that in the last 6 to 12 months. For European defense companies, there is an offer of fast-track permitting as well as financial opportunities. If everyone is working together, then we can move this project forward as fast as possible. Europe is fully aware of their vulnerabilities; they 100% need to build up their military inventories and stockpiles, and none of that can be done without the raw materials coming online.

James West: And recently, you announced a new hire in the form of a pretty significant executive addition?

Scott Eldridge: Yeah, so we hired the former CEO of Glencore Germany to come on as our chairman. We do have an excellent board of Canadians and Australians, but as we move forward with a European asset, we are slowly building out our European presence and increasing our profile there. The addition of Thomas Huser to our board is a very valuable addition for us. His strategy and connections in Europe and Germany will be very valuable to the company. He just has a wealth of experience in the European metal space. We’ll be adding more people to the team, but that was definitely a great move for the company.

James West: Back of the napkin, what is your rough guess as to the NPV of the project as it sits?

Scott Eldridge: Well, that’s a great question, James. It’s really a function of your metal price deck. One of the things that I like to look at as a former analyst was what is the CAPEX to NPV ratio. We’re going to be in a very strong position here where I would guess the capital cost would be somewhere in the $100 to $150 million US range—definitely on the low end of the scale for a junior. The NPV, again depending on metal prices, could be upwards of half a billion to a billion dollars.

James West: Fantastic. All right, Scott, we’re going to leave it there for now. We’re going to come back to you in due course. Thanks very much for your time today.

Scott Eldridge: Thanks for having me, James. Take care.

James West: You bet.

DISCLOSURE: This video is provided for information purposes only and is not intended as a recommendation to buy or sell any security. AI Power Marketing Inc was paid a fee of $50,000 for the production and distribution of this content as part of a video marketing campaign. No employees or affiliates of AI Power Marketing or Midas Letter hold any shares or any other type of rights to Military Metals shares.

The video images of foot soldiers mustering on military bases and on ships in news media paint a bleak picture that points to an extreme escalation that will be sure to drive energy prices higher in the months ahead. With higher energy prices we can expect to see a steep increase in the rate of price inflation in consumer goods, commodities and manufactured goods as all transportation-related costs rise.

The latent nature of such inflationary pressures in the cyclical logistics world means the real freak-everyone-out prices skyrocketing moment won’t happen until summer. Given the extreme volatility of the US leadership’s direction and utter lack of coherent planning is going to result in commensurate volatility in stocks, commodities and sovereign debt.

It always annoys me when people say things like “we are witnessing history being made” since that is what everyone is doing every day of their existence, but this sudden hyper predation on the Islamic world in the Middle East and the Latino world in America is a historic regression reminiscent of the Crusades.

Re-ignition of Precious Metals

Now that there has been up to 50% drop in value in some of our most promising precious metals juniors, the time is ripe to add to positions. Most sophisticated investors have been judiciously accumulating their favourite explorers and early stage developers since gold hit a low of $4254 on March 23rd.

Considering a lot of capital migrated into oil and gas stocks as the attack on Iran triggered supply side fears, that’s more a testament to gold’s persistent value than it is a n indication of any weakness.

The AI investment opinion was uniformly aligned toward the idea that the drop in gold and other commodity prices was primarily due to capital flows into Treasurys as the interest rate spiked. I’m not sure what kind of algorithm is trading Treasurys given that department’s recent disclosure that its balance sheet consisted of $48 trillion in liabilities and $6 trillion in assets (which is actually $158 trillion in liabilities when social security liabilities are included). Mainstream media, in an effort to make sensationalist hay, framed it as “The US is officially insolvent”.

The reality is that the US has been technically insolvent for almost twenty years or more, depending on your definition of “insolvent”.

But while the price of gold retreated as much as 25% from all time highs, gold juniors have shed above 50% or more in some cases, which makes buying them now akin to buying them when gold was at $2500.

So if you were feeling like you missed the gold junior train earlier this year, the winds of fate have granted another opportunity to get onboard at a discount.

Here’s my prediction: While the so-called “administration” has a long line of military distractions ready to go once the Iran assault is over, there will be lulls in the action, and eventually an end to the distractions. Which should facilitate the resurrection of the global financial market attention on the miserable white hot risk “asset” called the US Dollar.

And, more importantly, the spread of geopolitical ill-will toward the American unit of “debt” will surely result in increasing sell side pressure, and finally, a total rout from all Treasuries, which will catalyze the much predicted and always too early market collapse.

So this month’s focus is on gold juniors who have what I think are relatively good odds to appreciate in value exponentially as the above anticipated series of events unfolds.

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Especially a war that takes a fifth of global energy supplies offline, and by extension 20% of urea (nitrogen) fertilizer, 20% of plastics etc.

Especially a war that, no matter how you look at it, is drawing in a widening swath of reluctant participants.

Especially a war that is catalyzing a global recession.

You would think this is the perfect convergence of circumstances for gold and silver to catch a bid in an already healthy bull market. But the most effusive sentiment we can attribute to precious metals right now is along the lines of “hanging in there”.

The reason for that gets back to the opening statement: war drives money out of markets … literally, all markets. Especially when the destruction begins to offline important infrastructure of the global economy, like Amazon data centers.

The idea of a “safe haven” is subjective, and while the belief is that gold is a lot safer than Treasuries in the East, the opposite prevails in the West.

This is evident in the 7 - 10% premium in USD-quoted COMVEX gold on the Shanghai exchange versus US COMEX. Its a function of capital controls and strict restrictions on gold imports and exports to and from mainland China, but it demonstrates the conviction among Chinese investors that it is not a risk to pay that premium over US-quoted futures contracts. Especially since the price of physical being settled in Shanghai is aligned with that premium consistently.

Algorithmic Indifference

The algorithms determining capital allocation don’t concern themselves specifically with geolpolitical conflict as much as they respond to data. If x then y.

If the price of oil rises sharply, then sell gold and buy oil. If the price of natural gas rises faster than oil, sell gold and buy natgas. Since gold investors are sitting on a profit, it is subject to rotation when it ceases to appreciate, in favour of something else moving higher faster.

Everything is relative to data. While missiles slaughtering citizens is bad for business, it doesn’t disturb the digitized flow of capital through databases and algorithms whose sole self-interest is continuity.

And we have seen that, even with Amazon data center’s offline, the cloud ensures that replicated instances of the transactional chain continue to maintain continuity of and now, thanks to the explosion in the oil price and the rise in interest rates, has become yesterday’s news, and yesterday’s trade. Just like that, the bull market is over. For now.

Or at least, that is what we are supposed to think.

The reality of the situation is visible in the price discrepancies across physical markets, where actual gold and silver is traded (and most importantly, delivered). The supremely counter-intuitive weakness in gold and silver would be natural in a rising Treasury Yield environment.

In the current state of instantaneous algorithmic trading, as long as the system is stable and online, there is no political risk.

Information Homogenization

It used to be said that “its a difference of opinion that makes a market”, and while this is still true in theory, the reality is the AI has started to impose a homogenization of opinion because an increasing majority of market participants get their opinions from AI.

There has been a substantial rise in incoming mail from readers and business associates who have become sufficiently emboldened to share their AI informed opinion, and the evidence of that is in the cohesion among the AI narratives provided.

Go ahead and try this: Ask each of three or four of your favorite chat bots why gold and silver are trading lower amid geopolitical volatility.

The responses will be uniform more or less. And most of these opinions are derived from searches conducted by the AI’s and consolidated according to the most frequent opinions. Which may or may not be 100% correct.

But the point here is that if everybody is getting the same information about cause and effect, and asking any of the other common trader/investor questions like “what is the most likely stock to rise in the market today?”, then the bullish momentum is going to become more sustained, as is the bearish momentum.

As we outsource our research to AI more and more, this homogenization effect means more people chasing and abandoning the same trade.

The more pernicious nature of AI in shaping public opinion, however, comes with the recognition that American AI is starting to reflect a clearly biased perspective that, at the end of the day, erodes the utility of AI as a research assistant.

For example, you will notice in the AI responses to queries as to why precious metals are trading lower, none of the US-based AI’s discuss the risk of default on Treasuries as a result of the 160 percent-and-climbing debt-to-GDP ratio.

Wrap it up, will ya?

My point here is that day traders are probably the least likely group of investors to make money. There are plenty that find a system that works for a while, and with discipline, extract a profit.

But the market is increasingly determined by algorithms and strategies that influence each other moreso than fundamentals, and so trying to place a valid “reason” why gold and silver trade counter intuitively is not a profitable use of time. The best we can do is respond to the technicals (as traders) and maintain discipline.

The other camp of investors who all tend to make money over time are the buy-and-hold long term big picture investors. An mineral asset in the ground may not be the exciting ten bagger youthful investors tend to seek out, but it will always be an asset, and, with a long enough time horizon, will deliver a return on invested capital.

So asking why gold and silver are underperforming isn’t the right question. The question is “which assets are available for investment that represent value at a reasonable price?”

What is a reasonable price?

That’s like asking “how long is a piece of string?”

There are too many variables and perspectives for that to be a prescriptive rule.

Suffice to say that the value of gold and silver is not, and likely never has, really deteriorated, and it only increases over time. But price, my friends, price is often not a reflection of value, but is the result of a convergence of influences, the vast majority of which you will never see.

There’s always more influences bearing on price than can be seen above the waterline.

The violence in the Middle East is exerting its destabilizing effect on the world economy. “Financial crisis” is trending in Google search volumes, on par with the volumes experienced during the pandemic.

West Texas Intermediate Crude leading Brent Crude prices over $100 a barrel isn’t something we’ve seen very often. It demonstrates the expectation that the bottleneck called the Strait of Hormuz being choked will impact US gasoline and diesel prices moreso than Europe. Which is the first counter-intuitive signal in commodities.

The second one is the apparent weakness, relatively speaking, of the precious metals complex, which, again intuitively, one would expect to be rocketing higher as the Middle East dumpster fire grows hotter, wider and more intense.

The expression on the commander in chief’s face lately is reminiscent of a quadruple bypass patient insisting that smoking isn’t bad for you. Denial is the principle strategy here, and the prognosis for the rest of the Levant is for continued assured mutual destruction.

We’ll ignore the question of morality here, for now.

Though it is worth noting that the rate of persecution of pro-democracy activists in Iran has been interrupted by the attacks by Israel and the US, the quality of life suffered by all in the Middle East now has been extremely degraded. At this point, there is no end in sight.

Al Jazeera and the BBC are broadcasting coverage of what they categorize as the first stage of a financial crisis, since the price of oil, natural gas, and other refined petroleum products points to an imminent shortage of fertilizer, pesticides, and other hydrocarbon based ingredients of the modern industrial agricultural producer, which in turn suggests higher food prices are right around the corner.

Wheat futures support that thesis.

Higher food and energy costs have obvious implications for consumer spending, and the economic contraction inflicted by the now-cancelled tariff war have nonetheless caused many bankruptcies and increased unemployment.

Precious metals continue to drive alternative safe haven investment commensurate with the exponentiation of US debt, which now at $38.7 trillion, or 1.6 x US GDP.

Despite this, we see a level of volatility that appears to defy reason, driven in large part by the machinations of the thoroughly corrupt futures (paper) market.

These themes persist in broad daylight, and predicting intraday direction is a fool’s errand.

As of March 2026, the global macroeconomic landscape is defined by a “multi-speed” recovery where aggressive AI-driven capital expenditure is cushioning the U.S. and China from mounting stagflationary pressures. While geopolitical volatility in the Middle East has provided short-term support for energy and havens, a fundamental shift toward oversupply in oil and a speculative “debasement trade” in precious metals are creating a complex environment for investors.

Gold and silver are in a high-velocity bullish phase, driven by a “debasement trade” as central banks continue to diversify away from the U.S. dollar despite a recent sharp drop in monthly net purchases. Gold is testing psychological resistance near $5,200/oz and is projected to push toward $5,000–$5,400/oz by year-end, supported by stagflation fears and a deteriorating U.S. labor market. Silver remains more volatile, tracking gold’s monetary tailwinds while facing a physical supply deficit for the fifth consecutive year, keeping its directional bias firmly upward.

Copper has entered a hyper-bullish structural breakout, hitting record highs of over $14,500 per tonne as the “Age of Electricity” accelerates. The market is grappling with a severe disconnect between record-high refined prices and record-low (even negative) smelter treatment charges, indicating a massive shortage of copper concentrate. While short-term profit-taking may occur, the long-term trajectory is supported by a projected 30% supply deficit by 2035, making copper the primary beneficiary of the global energy transition.

The nickel market is experiencing a tentative recovery toward a higher trading range of $16,750–$18,750 per tonne, moving away from the glut-induced lows of 2025. This shift is largely dependent on Indonesia’s newfound supply discipline and potential stricter mining quotas. However, the outlook remains bifurcated: while aerospace and premium EV sectors maintain high demand for Class 1 nickel, the mass-market shift toward Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) batteries continues to cap the upside for lower-grade supply.

Antimony is trending bullish as it cements its status as a critical strategic mineral for defense, data centers, and solar glass. Although China recently suspended certain export bans to the U.S. through November 2026, the market remains highly concentrated, with over 80% of supply originating from just three countries. Steady industrial demand for flame retardants and emerging uses in liquid metal batteries suggest that prices will remain elevated, even as new Western mining projects slowly attempt to bridge the supply gap.

The directional outlook for rare earths is bullish due to persistent geopolitical friction and China’s continued dominance in refining (85%) and magnet manufacturing (90%). While some export restrictions were paused in late 2025, the underlying trend is one of “resource nationalism,” prompting massive Western subsidies—such as the $400 million U.S. Department of Defense grant to MP Materials. Supply remains tight as the automotive and aerospace sectors scramble to secure non-Chinese magnets, keeping upward pressure on permanent magnet materials like neodymium and dysprosium.

AI has become the primary macroeconomic engine, contributing an estimated 1% to global GDP growth through a massive capex cycle that is expected to exceed $1 trillion in 2026-2027. The outlook is bullish but high-risk, as the U.S. economy relies on AI infrastructure spending to offset trade war headwinds and a cooling housing market. However, the market is approaching a “proof-of-productivity” phase; failure to translate this historic investment into broad-based corporate earnings by the end of 2026 could trigger a significant valuation correction.

Besides a confirmation of the unsustainability of the US debt load, this fact underscores the now ubiquitous narrative regarding the shift of geo-economic dominance from west to east.

While this comes as no surprise, it also heralds the acceleration of investment into gold exploration companies that is will be a sustained uplift to the price of gold until the unwinding of the self-defeating debt-to-GDP ratios occurs, and clarity around a new default unit of trade emerges.

In the meantime, sovereign investment in gold as a proportion of the overall portfolio will likely accelerate in direct proportion to the rate of increase of US debt, since the price of gold is most widely quoted in US Dollars.

Here we present a list of what we feel are a top ten selection of the most investible developing gold companies with an asymmetric risk/reward profile based on jurisdiction, capital formation, upside potential, management, and scale and market cap/ounces in 43-101 compliant categories.

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Here’s why gold and silver are going to outperform most analysts and mainstream financial pundits’ forecasts, and why those same considerations are going to dampen demand from industria.

Macro setup: growth, inflation, and rates

Global growth is projected to run near 2%–2.5% in 2026, down from the post‑pandemic average, implying a softer but not collapsing demand environment for commodities overall.

Inflation, meanwhile, is expected to remain above central bank targets, with core measures in the U.S. hovering around 3% through mid‑2026 before only gradually converging to 2% by 2027, which keeps real policy rates under pressure.

The Fed and other G10 central banks are expected to continue cutting policy rates modestly in 2026 (e.g., Fed down toward the low‑3% range, BoC to about 2%), easing financial conditions and weakening the medium‑term support for the U.S. dollar.

Recession probability estimates for 2026 (around one‑third in some institutional forecasts) keep risk premia elevated and support hedging demand for gold and silver.

Mechanically, that combination—slower growth, sticky inflation, and a shallow easing cycle—tends to compress real yields while maintaining macro uncertainty, which is historically supportive for precious metals but less consistently bullish for cyclical base metals.

Precious metals: macro channels for appreciation

With inflation staying somewhat above target while policy rates drift lower, real yields are likely to remain capped or decline at the margin, improving the relative appeal of non‑yielding assets like gold and silver.

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There is currently a regulatory “fly in the ointment”, but agile intellects will see that this is the opportunistic wrinkle that is the time to position one’s self in front of this incoming tsunami of low-risk yield.

Let me clarify, for the record, that I am an engaged consultant to ArkenYield Inc, the pre-eminent yield generating strategy, and, in my opinion, the shortest safest path to the full 20% APY experience. ArkenYield is private, so accredited and qualified investors are welcome to contact me to learn how to participate.

Most people aren’t following the battle royale happening behind closed doors between lobbyists from the banking industry in the US, and the crypto industry. The Senate Banking Committee, chaired by Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.), is overseeing markup for the rules that will govern implementation of the GENIUS Act, which creates “legal payment” status for stablecoins backed by USD.

The traditional banking lobby, backed by $100 million fund to induce the committee to block any and all forms of stablecoin yield, are worried they will see $6 trillion in deposits flee traditional banks if i financial incentives to hold Stablecoins are better than any offered by banks to hold cash.

Which is negligible. And which is why Stablecoins are poised to completely disintermediate traditional deposit-taking institutions.

Who’s going to leave their paycheck at a stodgy old bank with limited hours of operation and laughable interest payments when they can transact with their cash in stablecoins online, 24/7, with the unused portion of their cash-on-hand generating 10% APY?

Nobody. And that’s where its going.

The US Banking Industry is on shaky ground at best.

If the US doesn’t approve yield on stablecoins from rewards, lending and market making, that industry will just set up outside of the United States, and the US will lose control of the $33 trillion stablecoin trading business.

This is the point in the evolution of cryptocurrencies where governments discover that by regulating and recognizing cryptocurrencies as payment formats, they have inadvertently decentralized the future of payments globally. All crypto needed was to get that foot in the door, and the appeal of decentralized, self-regulated currencies has done the rest.

Estimates by industry analysts suggest that the largest banks alone hold a substantial share of consumer deposits: for example, the top four U.S. banks held about 30 % of active deposits as of mid-2025, implying roughly $5.4 trillion or more in deposits at those institutions alone — much of which is consumer-oriented.

But the real news here isn’t that the Senate Banking Committee is trying to get out of Stablecoins’ way; the big story is the tectonic shift in consumer earning that is going to put savers back in control of their money, and drive earnings into it at rate not experienced anywhere since last century.

Arkenyield is an infrastructure layer protocol driving liquidity on-chain while generating yield. 20% yield. It exploits the spreads in stablecoin trades in a delta-neutral range that minimizes risk.

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I make the second mistake of assuming everyone understands that the entire financial system is built on the idea of mutual predation and parasitism. Only to discover that most people are actually convinced of a fundamental justice driven by the rule of law embedded in our systems.

Within the industry, everyone knows, its the law of the jungle. You eat what you kill unless it is snatched from your jaws. The universe doesn’t care about fair. The only crime is getting caught.

You know what happens when you make assumptions?

Today, I’m going to succinctly recount the history of the Futures market with a special focus on that moment when a couple of generations turned it from an economic forecasting protocol into a casino where all the tables are rigged. Note that this the perspective a cynical idealist.

Aside: I once wrote an outline of a multi-season episodic drama called El Mercado that followed the financial crisis of 2008 through the eyes of a cast of mostly nefarious characters from the bottom of the barrel. I showed it to a few guys in the financial industry to see if anyone wanted to produce it, but all I got was feigned offence that this somehow applied to them and it was way to cynical anyway. Ha!

The Genesis: Futures as an Economic Shield

The idea of “futures” trading emerged in a century defined by volatility — not of markets, but of crops, railways, and weather.

The Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), founded in 1848, arose from a logistical dilemma in America’s rapidly industrializing heartland. Midwestern farmers harvested their grain all at once, flooding Chicago with supply each autumn.

Lacking sufficient storage or transportation infrastructure, prices would collapse when the wagons arrived, only to soar months later when the grain was gone.

The CBOT was conceived as a marketplace to smooth this chaos — not to gamble on prices, but to ensure survival through coordination.

In its earliest days, trade at the CBOT was purely physical. Grain elevators, telegraph lines, and standard weights transformed Chicago into the nerve center of agricultural commerce. Merchants began to strike forward contracts — private deals where a farmer agreed to deliver a set quantity of grain at a future date for a fixed price. Yet because these were individualized agreements, they were often difficult to enforce if one party defaulted or the market moved sharply.

By the 1860s, standardization changed everything. The CBOT began instituting rules that specified contract size, quality grades, and delivery locations. These uniform terms allowed contracts to be freely bought and sold before delivery, giving birth to the modern futures contract. For the first time, a miller in New York could trade a contract for Chicago wheat without ever seeing the grain — confident that the exchange guaranteed both quality and performance. This shift from personal promise to institutional trust made speculative and hedging activity possible on a large scale.

Telegraph communication and the expansion of railroads extended the reach of futures markets across the country, linking physical crops to financial capitals. By the 1870s and 1880s, other commodities followed — corn, oats, pork bellies — and new exchanges emerged in New York, Kansas City, and Minneapolis. The core idea remained the same: to transform uncertainty into tradable risk.

While critics at the time accused speculators of turning agriculture into a game of paper profits, proponents understood that speculation provided liquidity — allowing genuine producers and consumers to hedge their exposure efficiently. Thus, what began as a tool to manage the “gluts and famines” of grain would evolve into a global mechanism of economic forecasting, shaping not just agriculture, but industries from oil to finance.

The Descent: The Rise of Financialization

Over the next 150 years, the market underwent a fundamental transformation. The focus shifted from risk management for producers to price discovery for speculators, and ultimately to commodity price manipulation by banks at the expense of commodity producers and consumers forced to pay higher prices for products made from commodities (i.e. everything).

Late 19th to early 20th century: hedgers vs. speculators

By the late 1800s, standardized futures contracts on exchanges like CBOT mainly served farmers, grain merchants, and millers hedging price risk, with speculators providing liquidity at the margin.

Telegraphed prices and growing national markets expanded speculative participation, but trading was still largely tied to physical flows and commercial information advantages.

Early U.S. laws such as the Future Trading Act of 1921 recognized futures as commercial risk‑management tools and began formal regulation of exchanges and grain futures.

Mid‑20th century: regulated, producer‑centric markets

Through the mid‑1900s, most futures volume remained in agricultural commodities, with “commercials” (producers, processors, users) driving long‑term position changes and hedging pressure.

U.S. regulation (e.g., margin rules, position limits, and the eventual creation of the CFTC in 1974) was explicitly framed around ensuring orderly price discovery and protecting hedgers from manipulation by large traders.

Speculative activity was present but relatively confined to brokers, merchants, and specialist traders whose scale was limited by capital and regulatory constraints.

1970s–1990s: derivatives innovation and the rise of financial players

From the 1970s, exchanges introduced new futures and options on energy, metals, interest rates, and currencies, turning futures markets into central tools for managing macro and financial risks, not just crops.

Swaps and over‑the‑counter (OTC) derivatives allowed banks and dealers to intermediate commodity risk off‑exchange, deepening their role as financial counterparties in commodity markets.

Deregulation trends in the 1980s–1990s, including relaxation of some position limits and growth in OTC markets, lowered barriers for larger financial institutions to build substantial commodity exposures.

Canary in the Gold Mine: How the Gold Carry Trade led the Futures Market Transformation

The gold carry trade was a structured way to turn low‑yielding bullion into an interest‑bearing asset, and large hedged producers like Barrick became key raw material suppliers into that system.

Central banks leased gold to bullion banks (like JP Morgan) at very low lease rates, often near 1%, rather than leaving it idle in vaults.

Bullion banks sold this borrowed gold into the spot market, then took the cash proceeds and invested them in higher‑yielding assets such as Treasuries or money‑market instruments, earning the spread between the investment yield and the low lease rate.

As long as gold prices were flat or falling, this “short gold, long cash assets” structure was profitable, because the bank could later buy back gold more cheaply to return to the central bank at lease maturity.

Major miners such as Barrick ran large forward sales and hedge books, agreeing years in advance to deliver gold at fixed prices to counterparties like JP Morgan.

Dealers who bought forwards from miners typically hedged their own exposure by shorting physical gold or derivatives, which in practice meant more gold being borrowed, sold, and recycled through the leasing and carry system.

Barrick’s program was big enough that its hedge book at times ran into tens of millions of ounces, effectively adding large volumes of “paper gold” supply against future production. Thus assuring an artificially low gold price, and the continuation of the scheme.

In a classic carry trade, heavy borrowing and selling of an asset in the spot market tends to depress its price relative to a world where that selling did not occur; in the 1990s bear market, this dynamic aligned with central banks being net sellers or less aggressive holders of gold.

Analysts and some lawsuits argued that the combination of central‑bank leasing, bullion‑bank carry trades, and producer hedge books contributed to a structurally weaker gold price by increasing effective supply via forwards and leased metal.

The mechanism ran through futures and forwards: forward selling by miners and short hedging by dealers helped anchor market expectations to lower future prices, which then fed back into spot and discouraged speculative long pressure.

Why the model eventually broke

Eventually the years of suppressed gold prices and the resulting underinvestment in exploration and new mine development begat a gold bull market that started in the early 2000s

The carry trade’s core assumption—cheap future gold—reversed: rising prices turned forward hedge books into large mark‑to‑market liabilities for miners like Barrick.

Barrick spent the 2000s steadily reducing and then eliminating its hedge book, explicitly acknowledging that its legacy hedges had become a drag in a rising price environment. This is what caused a relatively weak performance in Barrick’s shares during the period that would otherwise have seen the stock soar: All the company’s production had been sold years into the future at a fixed low price.

As prices climbed and central banks shifted from net sellers to net buyers, the economics and political optics of large‑scale gold leasing and carry trades deteriorated, and the practice retreated from its 1990s prominence. It was also not lost on regulators that their scheme was increasingly in the spotlight shone by fringe pundits.

In fact, the success of the independent financial newsletter writer was crystallized by the fact that the mainstream press back then was ignorant of the phenomenon, and under the influence of banks, dismissed the allegations of coordinated price manipulation as “conspiracy theory” - not the last conspiracy theory that turns out to be true in the commodity market’s history.

In narrative terms, the gold carry trade turned gold from a store of value into funding collateral for yield‑seeking strategies: producers locked in forward prices, bullion banks shorted and recycled leased gold into bond markets, and for a time this complex helped keep gold prices subdued—until the very bull market it helped delay made the trade too risky and expensive to sustain.

2000s: “financialization” and index speculation

After the early‑2000s equity bust, banks and index providers aggressively marketed commodity futures as a new asset class for portfolio diversification, attracting pensions, insurers, and mutual funds.

UN and FAO research document a surge of “financial investors” (index funds, hedge funds, investment banks) whose inflows into commodity futures indices from 2000 to 2008 reached hundreds of billions of dollars.

This financialization shifted the center of gravity from commercial hedgers to non‑commercial speculators, with long index positions often unrelated to physical supply–demand conditions.

Distorted price discovery and manipulation concerns

Studies by UNCTAD and others argue that large, trend‑following financial flows contributed to extreme price swings in the 2007–2008 and 2010–2011 commodity spikes, disrupting traditional price signals for storage and production decisions.

Research finds that short‑term futures price movements are increasingly driven by the liquidity demands of non‑commercial traders, while commercial hedging shifts explain longer‑term variation, showing a growing speculative imprint on prices.

Policymakers and scholars warn that when financial investors dominate order flow, futures prices can overshoot fundamental value, making hedging more costly and less reliable for producers, especially in developing countries.

Banks, market power, and producer squeeze

Large investment banks built vertically integrated commodity operations in the 2000s - trading futures and swaps, warehousing physical commodities, and financing trade - blurring lines between market‑making and market power.

Critics argue that this integration enabled subtle forms of price influence, from controlling storage bottlenecks to concentrating futures positions, often to the detriment of farmers and smaller producers facing higher volatility and basis risk.

As speculative and index capital grew less constrained by production or consumption, the futures market’s function tilted: from primarily insuring producers’ risks to primarily serving investors’ search for yield, with producers absorbing more price instability and margin stress.

Conclusion: A System Against the Public

The evolution of the futures market is complete. It has moved from a tool that helped farmers feed the world to a corrupt price-suppression enterprise. Agencies like the CFTC and exchanges like the CME no longer manage risk; they manage the perception of value to protect the solvency of the “Big 4” banks.

The 2026 Silver Crash proves that in a conflict between physical reality (supply/demand) and the paper system, the regulators will always choose to “break” the price to save the players. The public is not the client of the CME; the public is the liquidity used to bail out the banks when their gambles go wrong.

This system will eventually collapse. Digital tokenization will remove the time and intermediary layers necessary to obfuscate the crime in progress.

Of course, there will be no shortage of bad actors looking for ways to game that system. After all, there will be lots of futures industry guys out of work at that point.

But there is ample evidence indicating a coordinated attack on silver, such as we have seen time and again since the turn of the century. Never acknowledged by mainstream financial media, this conspiracy is not a theory.

Not for the first time, the futures market is the main venue of manipulation by agencies overtly tasked with maintaining market - CME Group.

And we have a smoking gun in terms of JP Morgan’s impeccable timing in buying silver at the bottom of Friday’s rout. This is silver market manipulation, pure and simple.

Recent data indicates that the coverage ratio of Registered inventory (silver immediately available for delivery) against Open Interest has actually plunged to 14%.

The Inventory vs. Open Interest Disconnect

The primary metric for a potential “delivery squeeze” is the ratio of Registered stocks to total Open Interest. In January 2026, the silver market hit a historic milestone:

• Registered Inventory: Dropped to approximately 107.7 million ounces.

• Open Interest: Stood at roughly 152,020 contracts, representing 760 million ounces of paper claims.

• The Math: This results in a coverage ratio of ~14.2%. If even 15% of contract holders demanded physical delivery simultaneously, the exchange would technically lack the immediate inventory to satisfy those claims in the Registered category.

2. Structural Deficits and “Eligible” Silver

It is important to distinguish between the two types of silver in CME vaults:

• Registered: Metal that has been warranted and is ready for delivery.

• Eligible: Metal that meets exchange requirements but is owned by private parties (e.g., ETFs, individuals) and is not currently for sale or delivery.

The “drain” on Registered stocks has been accelerated by industrial demand and a historic rally that saw silver prices surge well beyond the $100/oz mark this month. This has created a “backwardation” effect where spot prices are higher than future prices, incentivizing holders to pull metal out of the exchange rather than store it there.

3. The CME’s Defensive Maneuvers

To manage the risk of a “run on the vault,” the CME has implemented several aggressive policy shifts:

• Margin Hikes: In late 2025 and January 2026, the CME shifted to a percentage-based margin system (9% for silver). This forces traders to put up more cash as prices rise, effectively acting as a “brake” on speculative long positions to reduce the total Open Interest.

• New Contract Sizes: To manage retail demand without further straining the 5,000-oz “Big Bar” supply, the CME is launching 100-Ounce Silver futures in February 2026.

• Cash Settlement Provisions: Exchange rules generally allow for emergency cash settlements (force majeure) if physical metal is unavailable, though this is considered a “nuclear option” that would damage the exchange’s reputation.

But there is even more indications that this time around, JP Morgan is an active participant in a conspiracy to manipulate silver lower to mitigate its own disastrous exposure to silver alongside the CME.

Evidence Supporting Coordinated Intervention

The most compelling evidence is the timing of CME policy changes and JP Morgan’s positioning immediately following the crash.

• Weaponized Margin Hikes: On January 28, just 48 hours before the crash, the CME raised silver margins to 11%. After the crash on Friday afternoon, they raised them again to 15%. Increasing margins after a massive drop is counter-intuitive if the goal is to “stabilize” the market; however, it is highly effective at preventing retail “dip-buyers” from entering, ensuring the price stays suppressed while large shorts (like JPM) cover.

• The “J.P. Morgan Bottom-Fish”: On Monday, January 26, J.P. Morgan’s Marko Kolanovic publicly called for silver to trade at “half its current price.” On the day of the crash (Jan 30), J.P. Morgan reportedly called for delivery of 633 contracts (over 3 million ounces) at the exact bottom of the dip ($78.29). This suggests they didn’t just “foresee” the drop—they were positioned to capitalize on the exact moment the floor fell out.

• The Reuters “Strategic Metal” Leak: A timely Reuters “Exclusive” report on Friday morning claimed the U.S. government was ending support for strategic metals. This report (which some analysts labeled as a plant) triggered automated selling algorithms across all commodity desks simultaneously.

2. The “Cash Settlement” Incentive

Your point about covering in cash rather than finding physical silver is the “smoking gun” of this theory.

• Physical Shortage: Registered silver inventories had dropped to ~108 million ounces against an open interest of 760 million ounces.

• The Squeeze Escape: At $120/oz, the “delivery deficit” was a systemic risk to the CME’s clearinghouse. By forcing the price down to $76, the exchange effectively reduced the “notional” liability of the short positions by nearly $34 billion in a single day. This makes “Exchange for Physical” (EFP) or cash-settlement negotiations much cheaper for the banks.

Mainstream financial media argues the crash was a natural result of a parabolic “blow-off top”, due to:

• Extreme Overbought Conditions: Silver had gained 54% in January alone. Such vertical moves almost always end in a “liquidity hole” where there are no buyers left at the top.

• The “Warsh” Factor: The nomination of a hawkish Fed Chair sent the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) vertical. Since silver is priced in dollars, a surging dollar provides a powerful mechanical headwind.

But that’s all part of the smoke and mirrors, in my opinion.

That was until Friday.

Spot gold closed down 8%, silver - 23%. Copper futures shed 5%.

Though that is only in paper silver and gold markets. In physical silver and gold markets, both commodities closed up. Demonstrating in clear terms that “futures” for silver and gold are a synthetic asset that does not ever reference the actual price of gold and silver any more.

Margin requirements for both gold and silver have doubled again, which is consistent with CFTC-sanctioned scams to force smaller players out of the market at a loss.

If ever there was a time when the larges commercial players in the commodity space needed gold and silver to interrupt breakout price action, now is it.

So is the rug pull on silver and gold coincidentally timed for a Friday?

This blow-off top, as was visible in technicals during the weeks leading up to Friday, was widely attributed to the nomination of Kevin Warsh to replace Jerome Powell as Central Bank Chairman.

But the uniformity of that proclamation by mainstream financial press belies a Pavlovian dog whistle blown by the regime in the House. Which is to say, there appears to be some coordination both in the price action and in the media interpretation.

This coordination pattern meshes well with the evident geopolitical coordination of extreme right wing leaders suddenly imposing fascist policies on their citizens, a peculiar and unsettling signal in that it is global.

Which suggests to me that the Chicken Little chorus exclaiming imminent doom might be an appropriate response to a crisis with an inorganic origin. Though I now stray deeply into conspiracy territory.

The question is: should we sell everything and hold fast to our cash? Or is this blow-off top, well-predicted by technical indicators in the week’s earlier session, merely a correction in line with commodity bubbles throughout history? A sort of consolidation before the resumption of impossible feats of rapid appreciation?

The leverage to the rising silver price in development stage miners is visible in the three weeks since we published our top choices from among the Canadian explorers, with the best of them already up 43% and the worst performing down 12% as of this writing.

The key to a successful strategy for investing in emerging mining companies lies in diversifying risk across a basket of highest quality contenders.

This month, we focus on copper and gold juniors, whose economics have been positively affected by the runaway prices in each commodity. We feature one producer and one explorer, each of which bear all the hallmarks of financial discipline, exploration rigour, and safe jurisdictions.

But first, let’s review why copper and gold are two of the hottest metallic commodities on earth right now.

This investment thesis posits that the 12–18 month horizon (through mid-to-late 2027) represents a generational entry point for small-cap junior gold and copper explorers.

This thesis is driven by a convergence of three macro-drivers: structural supply deficits in copper due to the AI/electrification boom, a monetary debasement cycle fueling gold as a tier-1 reserve asset, and an M&A supercycle where major producers—flush with cash but starving for reserves—must acquire juniors to survive.

I. Executive Summary: The “Buy” Case for Juniors

Large-cap producers trade at multiples of their current cash flow, but junior explorers trade on potential. In a flat market, this potential is discounted to near zero. In a bull market, it is priced as an option on the future.

We are entering a phase where the “option value” of in-ground ounces will re-rate violently upwards.

• The Gold Driver: Central bank accumulation has created a permanent floor under gold prices, while upcoming interest rate cuts will lower the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets.

• The Copper Driver: The world is physically short of copper needed for the green transition and the AI data center build-out. New mines take 15+ years to permit; the only immediate solution is acquiring advanced junior projects.

• The Junior Leverage: Historically, when the underlying metal rises 20%, quality juniors can rise 200–500% due to operating leverage and speculative inflows.

II. Gold: The Monetary & Geopolitical Hedge

The thesis for gold has shifted from a simple “inflation hedge” to a “sovereign necessity.” The weaponization of the US dollar has forced Eastern central banks to diversify into gold, creating price-insensitive demand.

Supply & Demand Dynamics

• Demand (The “Fear” Trade): Central bank buying hit record levels in 2024-2025 and is projected to remain above 500 tonnes/year through 2027. This removes a massive amount of physical supply from the market. Furthermore, as Western interest rates decline (expected 75bps cuts in 2026), Western investment demand (ETFs) will likely return, creating a “double-engine” demand profile.

• Supply (Peak Gold): Global gold production has effectively plateaued. Major discoveries are becoming statistically rarer. The average head grade of mined gold is declining, raising the All-In Sustaining Costs (AISC) for majors.

Why Juniors Benefit

Majors are facing a “reserve cliff.” They are mining more gold than they are finding. To maintain production profiles, they cannot rely on the drill bit alone; they must buy ounces in the ground. Juniors with defined resources (1M+ ounces) in safe jurisdictions will become prime takeover targets at significant premiums.

III. Copper: The “Electrification of Everything” Shortage

While gold is a monetary play, copper is a pure physical constraint play. The world simply does not have enough copper projects in the pipeline to meet the combined demand of the Energy Transition and the AI revolution.

Supply & Demand Dynamics

1. Demand (AI & Energy):

• Data Centers: AI-ready data centers require massive power infrastructure, which is copper-intensive.

• EVs & Renewables: An electric vehicle requires 3–4x more copper than an ICE vehicle. Wind and solar are similarly copper-hungry.

• Grid Modernization: Aging western grids require total overhauls to handle intermittent renewable power.

2. Supply (The Great Deficit):

• The Gap: Forecasts project a supply deficit ranging from 5 to 10 million tonnes by 2030.

• Grade Decline: Major mines (e.g., in Chile and Peru) are seeing ore grades fall, meaning they must move more rock to get the same amount of copper.

• Lack of Investment: The industry under-invested in exploration for the last decade. A new copper mine takes 10–20 years to bring online.

Why Juniors Benefit

Despite the fact that approximately one-third (over 30% to 35%)of the global annual copper supply is derived from recycled (secondary) copper, the supply side is facing a deficit.

The only solution to the deficit is new mines. Juniors holding significant copper porphyry or high-grade VMS deposits are effectively holding the “new oil” of the 21st century. We are already seeing aggressive M&A (e.g., BHP, Rio Tinto) as majors pivot to secure future supply.

IV. The Generational Opportunity

The specific opportunity in the next 12–18 months lies in the “Orphan Period” and “Discovery Phase” of the current development landscape.

• The Setup: Many juniors have spent the last 2 years de-risking projects (drilling, PEAs, PFSs) but have seen their share prices stagnate due to high interest rates and risk-off sentiment.

• The Catalyst: As capital returns to the sector (driven by gold hitting $3,000+ and copper $5.00+), these stocks will re-rate from “dormant” to “strategic assets.”

• The M&A Put: The downside is protected by the fact that if the equity market doesn’t value these companies correctly, a major producer will buy them out for the rock value alone.

V. The Verdict

The next 12–18 months offer an asymmetric risk/reward ratio for junior explorers. The downside is limited (valuations are already near historic lows), while the upside is uncapped due to the “mania” phase that typically accompanies commodity supercycles.

The Strategy:

• Focus on Quality: Buy juniors with proven management teams (serial successes), safe jurisdictions (avoiding unstable regimes), and high-grade assets (drilling success).

• Diversify: Hold a basket of 5–10 juniors. One discovery or buyout can return 10x, paying for all losers.

• Timeline: Accumulate now before the generalist funds rotate back into the sector in late 2026.

Bottom Line: The physics of supply and demand are undeniable. The world needs more metal, and the majors have run out of it. The juniors hold the keys to the future supply, and over the next 18 months, they will likely be paid a king’s ransom for them.

Now, without further ado, here are two selections that meet all of the above criteria.

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Lacking a broad understanding both in its target institutional audience (so far) and widespread uptake of its GLDY token, the buy-side mania that will materialize as gold continues to climb is still a future phenomenon.

It is no surprise that the evolution of money is evading the attention of the mainstream investor. Having just topped up the treasury with a $35 million round, Streamex is about to become the first institutional-grade precious metals token to break out of the pack of would-be contenders.

While the concept of Real World Asset Tokens (RWATs) is not necessarily new in the crypto history timeline, one that pays yield on physical gold held in trust on behalf of the token holder, is.

Buying a share of Streamex is a leveraged bet on the continuation of the rise in precious metals prices as the sovereign debt trade increasingly weakens.

As a hedge against the hyper-inflationary failure of purchasing power in G7 countries with above 125% debt to GDP ratios (Japan at 225%, USA at 160% etc) Streamex provides a double hit.

Owning a share is exposure to the anticipated migration of large institutions away from sovereign debt instruments and toward (at least in part) toward precious metals as performance in debt breaks down and risk increases.

Owning the GLDY token is a direct proxy to holding gold that has none of the storage or security risks of bullion, and adds a 4% dividend. So holders are paid to invest in an appreciating asset with yield.

What GLDY is, legally and economically

Each GLDY token is structured as a non‑voting digital share of a Cayman SPV that holds physical gold, with each token

intended to be backed by one fine troy ounce of bullion.

The gold is leased out via Monetary Metals programs, and the lease fee (targeting up to about 4% annualized) is paid in additional ounces of gold and distributed as more GLDY, i.e., it is explicitly a yield‑bearing investment product, not just a payment token.

GLDY is whitelisted, KYC’d, and positioned for institutional and accredited investors, with marketing that openly describes it as a “regulated, yield‑bearing, gold‑backed stablecoin” and “tradeable security.”

Under any of the current U.S. legislative and SEC policy trajectories, that makes GLDY look like a tokenized security (RWA note/unit in an SPV) rather than a payment stablecoin or “digital commodity”.

What that means for future regulation is that once the Senate Banking Committee is able to overcome the banking lobby’s well funded attempts to neuter cryto and stables, RWATs will become another regulated asset class with all uncertainty removed.

But for now, with the Clarity act lacking clarity completely, the uncertainty here is yet another opportunity that presents itself, as the inevitability of approval and mainstreaming rewards the early adopters.

Streamex is effectively building a “zero-Capex” gold mine.

Traditional Miners must pay rising energy and labor costs to get gold out of the ground. Inflation hurts them.

Streamex’ “cost of extraction” is software maintenance and legal compliance (fixed costs). As the price of gold rises, the Assets Under Management (AUM) value swells automatically.

A. The Multiplier: Streamex charges fees on AUM and earns a spread on the yield. If Gold goes from $5,000 to $6,000:

1. The USD value of the AUM rises 20% (Fee revenue up 20%).

2. The 4% yield becomes worth 20% more in USD terms.

3. Operational costs remain flat.

Result: Pure margin expansion. This explains the “operating leverage” mentioned in the text.

B. The “Yield-Starved” Institutional Wedge

Institutional investors are currently trapped. They want gold (inflation hedge) but hate that it has no yield (negative carry).

The Competitor: An ETF like $GLD charges ~0.40% per year.

The Streamex Fix: GLDY pays ~4.0% per year.

The Bull Argument: In a high-inflation environment, the spread between paying storage fees and earning yield is not just a “feature”—it is an institutional mandate. If Streamex captures even 0.1% of the global gold ETF market ($200B+), its revenue would arguably justify a valuation multiples higher than its current market cap.

C. The Empress Royalty “Call Option”

Streamex bought a 9.9% stake in Empress Royalty (TSXV: EMPR) which will act as a balance sheet accelerant.

• If Gold enters a mania phase, junior royalty companies (like Empress) often outperform the metal by 2x-3x.

• Streamex holds this asset on its books. A surge in Empress stock directly boosts Streamex’s book value, potentially solving the “weak liquidity ratios” mentioned in the text without needing to sell more STEX shares (dilution).

3. Upside Outlook

Streamex is an asymmetric bet on the modernization of gold. It trades at a fraction of the valuation of traditional royalty companies because the market still views it as a “tech penny stock.”

The moment GLDY hits $100M in AUM (proving institutional trust), the market may re-rate STEX from a “speculative tech play” to a “high-growth asset manager.

Traditional Gold Streamers trade at ~15x-20x sales due to their high margins. As Streamex proves its “Digital Streaming” model works, it argues for a similar premium multiple, unlike low-margin crypto exchanges.

And given the evident access to capital, the likelihood of a diversifying asset management platform at the bleeding edge of digital finance innovation through continued acquisitions remains extremely high.

No matter your own level of digital financial sophistication, Streamex is already a leading digital asset manager.

Disclosure: Not currently holding shares or with any financial relationship whatsoever with the company directly or indirectly though that is subject to change, which will be disclosed as required.

In the investment world, the compression of the ratio to 50 is the point where investors sold silver and started buying gold. Historically.

Throughout history, the silver-to-gold ratio has most commonly been much lower (typically 12:1 to 15:1 for thousands of years).

The ratio of 50:1 is a relatively modern phenomenon, appearing primarily in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The geological ratio of silver to gold on Earth is ~18:1, i.e. 18 x more silver than gold.

Silver seldom occurs as the primary metal, and is most often found in geological systems where the primary metals are zinc, lead and tin.

Throughout history, the silver-to-gold ratio has most commonly been much lower (typically 12:1 to 15:1 for thousands of years). The ratio of 50:1 is a relatively modern phenomenon, appearing primarily in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Here are the key historical periods when the silver-to-gold ratio was approximately 50:1:

1. The “Fair Value” Era (1990s – 2008)

For nearly two decades leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, the ratio averaged between 45:1 and 60:1.

During this period, a ratio of 50:1 was widely considered the “new normal” or baseline equilibrium. When the ratio drifted away from 50, traders often used it as a signal to buy or sell, expecting it to return to this mean.

2. The Post-2011 Correction (2011 – 2013)

The ratio famously plunged to near 30:1 in April 2011 (when silver hit near $50/oz). As the silver bubble burst, the ratio rapidly climbed back up, crossing the 50:1 mark in late 2011 and throughout 2012.

This was a transitional period. Silver was coming down from historic highs, and gold was holding its value better, causing the ratio to widen back through the 50s.

3. The Great Depression Onset (Early 1930s)

After WWI, the ratio began to widen significantly from the historical 15:1 standard. It crossed 50:1 in the early 1930s as silver prices collapsed during the deflationary crash of the Great Depression.

Unlike the modern era where 50:1 is seen as “normal” or even “low,” in the 1930s, hitting 50:1 was a sign of extreme economic distress for silver. It eventually blew past this level to reach nearly 100:1 by 1939/1940.

4. The 1980s “Hunt Brothers” Aftermath

In January 1980, the ratio hit an extreme low of roughly 17:1 (due to the Hunt brothers trying to corner the silver market). As that attempt failed and silver prices crashed, the ratio shot back up, crossing 50:1 in the mid-1980s (roughly 1983–1985).

Based on the current ratio of ~50:1, the historical signal suggests that silver is no longer “cheap” relative to gold.

But this is based on a historic cyclical reality when silver did not occupy a disproportionate importance in industrial applications. That, alongside the consolidated sovereign debt hyperinflation that is culminating in interest rate volatility across traditionally predictable ranges signals eroding confidence in the entire sovereign debt complex’s sustainability.

In short, if the global monetary system is poised for a reset (which it is), then there will be exponential jumps in the prices of both gold and silver before a new financial system evolves, and gains stability through trust.

For that reason gold and silver are both still cheap.

But let’s look at how the traditional investment signals interpreted silver achieving a 50:1 price ratio with gold:

Here is the breakdown of what this ratio suggests right now:

1. The “Swap Strategy” Signal: Buy Gold

Investors who trade the ratio typically follow a specific cycle: “Buy Silver” when the ratio is high (above 80:1) and “Swap to Gold” when the ratio compresses (below 50:1).

• The Signal Now: With the ratio at ~50:1, silver has outperformed gold significantly over the last year (the “catch-up” trade is complete).

• The Move: Historical trends suggest selling some silver holdings (which have appreciated rapidly) to buy gold. This allows you to lock in the volatility gains of silver and move them into the stability of gold.

2. Why 50:1 is the “Resistance Floor”

In the modern era (post-1980), the ratio rarely stays below 50:1 for long. It tends to bounce off this level and widen again.

• 2011 Example: When silver hit nearly $50/oz, the ratio compressed to roughly 30:1 briefly, but spent most of the high-price period around 45-50:1 before silver crashed and the ratio blew out to 80:1.

• 1980 Example: The ratio briefly touched 17:1 (the extreme anomaly), but quickly corrected.

• Risk: At 50:1, the downside risk for silver is statistically much higher than the upside potential compared to gold.

3. The “Volatility” Factor

Silver is a “high beta” asset—it moves faster than gold in both directions.

• Bull Market: Silver rises faster (ratio falls). This has already happened.

• Bear Market: Silver falls much faster (ratio rises).

• Current Implication: If the precious metals market corrects from here, silver will likely drop twice as fast as gold. Buying gold at 50:1 is a defensive play against this volatility.

I repeat, this is the traditional signal matrix. The current crush of buy side interest in gold and silver is fear-driven due to geopolitical psychosis characterized by extreme nationalism and conservatism.

We are about to see that the price action in precious metals will not correlate to any interest rate policy or quantitative easing this time around. The can has been kicked to the end of the hyperi-nflationary road, and all that remains is the implosion of the global monetary system.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-S.C.), published HR 3633 on January 12, which laid out an initial set of rules to govern “the offer and sale of digital commodities by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to amend the Federal Reserve Act to prohibit the Federal reserve banks from offering certain products or services directly to an individual, to prohibit the use of central bank digital currency for monetary policy, and for other purposes.

The first markup of the bill’s text was scheduled to be published on January 18, but the committee declined to do so after 137 amendments were proposed, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong withdrew his support, as a deep chasm opened between the traditional banking industry and crypto industry on the subject of yield.

A “markup” in the Senate Banking Committee is the formal meeting where senators debate, change, and vote on the text of a bill before deciding whether to send it to the full Senate.

Armstrong’s withdrawal of support came after he said the bill had “too many issues” and would “"kill" crypto companies' ability to offer rewards” to customers for holding stablecoins.

The American Banking Association, the principle lobby group for the traditional commercial banking sector, is lobbying the committee to ban yield on stablecoins under any circumstances, citing a “$6 trillion capital flight risk” from the banking system.

Banking lobby groups argue that allowing yield or rewards on payment stablecoins threatens bank funding, credit availability, and the basic policy design of “payments‑only” stablecoins, so they want an explicit, comprehensive ban that covers issuers, affiliates, and exchanges.

Their case rests on systemic‑risk and “level playing field” claims: that yield-bearing stablecoins would siphon trillions from insured deposits, force banks to raise rates, and let lightly regulated platforms run a de facto shadow banking system.

Core economic arguments

• Yield on stablecoins will trigger large “deposit flight” from banks, because consumers will park savings in higher‑yield, dollar‑denominated stablecoins instead of low‑yield bank deposits.

• Banking groups cite Treasury-linked estimates that up to about $6.6 trillion in deposits could be at risk, which they say would directly reduce the funds banks use to make mortgages, small‑business loans, farm credit, and other community lending.

• They argue that if banks must raise deposit rates to compete with stablecoin yields, the cost of credit will rise across the economy, hurting borrowers such as homebuyers, students, and small businesses.

The self-serving nature of the banks’ arguments are clear: Stablecoins constitute an existential risk to the traditional banking industry, which is exactly what drives interest among consumers.

The capital flight to Stablecoins they cry about is simply a competitive outcome.

Their argument implying higher cost of loans and less available lending capacity is disingenuous; Stablecoin lending is already disintermediating traditional lending, and will continue to do so with its superior 24/7 service model and instant reallocation capabilities.

The standoff is simple: Banks pay minimal interest on deposits to customers, and harvest the spread between the US Treasuries they hold to back their loans as a result. Stablecoin issuers like Circle propose to reward customers with higher yield to encourage preference of stablecoins over other forms of savings. That would result in a massive capital migration into stablecoin and away from banks.

Yield is currently generated by Stablecoins and cryptocurrencies via lending and market making, in addition to rewards, and any rule to block that would be detrimental to the entire crypto industry.

The American Banking Association has a $100 million budget to persuade the committee to ban almost all forms of yield outright.

But Trump, who profits personally from his own Stablecoin, and would clearly benefit from the preservation of yield strategies in the bill, will likely be the deciding factor behind the scenes.

Negotiations are likely occurring at the highest level behind the scenes, as this is the watershed moment that could gut traditional banking and ignite the future of crypto on all fronts.

The issue is further complicated by the fact that the crypto industry would continue to pay yield offshore, which could result in the US missing its chance to be the center of the crypto universe.

From a consumer’s perspective, yield-bearing stablecoins can be a net positive, but only if several nontrivial risks are solved; right now, those risks are real and unevenly regulated.

The banking lobby is highlighting gaps that matter for consumers (insurance, run risk, legal treatment in bankruptcy), even if it is also clearly protecting its own economics.

Real consumer upsides

Higher effective return: Retail users could earn more on idle cash than on traditional checking/savings, especially in a low‑rate or low‑pass‑through environment.

Better UX and programmability: Stablecoins can move 24/7, integrate with DeFi and fintech apps, and support programmable payments, which can make budgeting, remittances, and cross‑border activity cheaper and more flexible.

Competitive pressure on banks: The threat of deposit flight can push banks to raise deposit rates or improve services, indirectly benefiting even those who never touch a stablecoin.

Key risks that don’t exist with insured deposits

• No deposit insurance: Stablecoin balances, even when issued by banks, are generally not insured like deposits; if the issuer or platform fails, users can be treated as unsecured creditors and may take losses or face long freezes.

• Run and redemption risk: If reserves are invested in longer‑duration or riskier assets to generate yield, a loss of confidence or market shock can break the peg, trigger runs, and force fire‑sales or gated redemptions.

• Platform and legal risk: Many yield programs are offered by intermediaries (exchanges, wallets) that combine custody, lending, and trading, with weak segregation of client assets and unclear contractual terms about who owns what in a failure.

When it could be net positive for consumers

• Clear, bank-like safeguards: If yield‑bearing stablecoin products are subject to capital, liquidity, conduct rules, segregation of client assets, and clear redemption-at-par requirements, many of the current concerns shrink substantially.

• Transparent risk–return disclosure: Consumers would need plain‑language disclosure that makes the trade‑off explicit: no FDIC insurance, how reserves are invested, what happens in insolvency, and how yield is generated.

Functional competition, not shadow deposits: Policymakers are trying to distinguish between:

1. Payment stablecoins that behave like cash and are tightly regulated, and

2. Higher‑yield “investment” products that are clearly labeled as such and not quietly sold as deposit equivalents.

In that kind of regime, the combination of earning more on unused balances while still accessing credit from well‑regulated stablecoin lender would be a net consumer gain, but without those guardrails, consumers are trading away insurance and stability for yield in ways that many do not fully understand.

It is important to note that when gold is valued at $100,000 per troy ounce, we are talking US dollars. Which doesn’t necessarily indicate that the value of gold has risen appreciably; merely that the purchasing power of USD has declined since 2015.

Gold going to $100,000 seems like such an extreme forecast. But envision a time when, while trading below $600, people scoffed at the idea that Bitcoin could achieve $100,000. That was 10 years ago.

A mere decade.

Driven by massive speculative interest stimulated by a healthy dose of market manipulation by Tether in 2017/18, that perception was burst, and Bitcoin’s race to $100k was on.

Speculative bubbles always burst when no concrete value underlies the run-up in price.

Gold and silver have been stores of value for 5,000 years at least.

Let’s revisit the active catalysts pushing gold relentlessly higher.

Sovereign Debt Catastrophe

Global sovereign debt has crossed $100 trillion. The United States alone carries $36 trillion in federal debt, with annual deficits exceeding $2 trillion. The US paid almost half a trillion dollars in interest payments in 2025.

Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio sits at 264%. Canada is at 112%; Italy, France, and the United Kingdom all exceed 100% debt-to-GDP ratios.

Bond yields are rising.

Trump in his infinite financial markets sophistication has decided to investigate Jerome Powell for not cutting interest rates according to Trump’s expressed threats.

But its the buyers of sovereign debt instruments who are the ultimate arbiters of yield. Yield demanded is commensurate with risk perceived by the buyer. You can only accommodate the yield demands of your lender when you need the money.

The entire charade of sovereign debt being part of some sort of legitimate repayable facility is dependent on the role of central bankers to project control while under the control of sovereign wealth buyers. If the credibility of central bankers becomes unsupportable because they accommodate presidents, then the charade will come to an end.

It will become ever more transparent that sovereign debt is the mutual fraud committed by governments against their citizens to create the complacency and acceptance of their position as borrower in the financial food chain.

Why should anyone repay bank debt if the government itself defaults and then changes the rules to call the default a debt-to-gdp ratio?

The entire financial system’s arbitrary distribution of wealth is dependent on the illusion held by the public that there are some rules that govern us all.

The Rock and the Hard Place

Central banks (which is to say “The Fed”, for now) face an impossible choice: raise rates and bankrupt governments, or print money and destroy currencies.

Neither option preserves confidence in sovereign paper. And the destruction of purchasing power of sovereign currencies - which the governments and universities call “inflation” to keep us all bamboozled - is clear evidence that they prefer the debasement route.

Throughout history, the debasement of the national currency is the main road to government collapse. With that process well underway and accelerating, runaway gold and silver prices are the inevitable outcome.

The maximum potential gold price is directly proportional to the scale of advanced world national debt.

The world is watching. When Russia got sanctioned, over 20 nations began diversifying reserves away from dollars.

China and India are buying gold by the tonne.

Central banks purchased 1,037 tonnes of gold in 2023, the second-highest level on record. In the first 3 quarters of 2026, the World Gold Council reports that central banks bought 1,613 tonnes - a new record.

Key Inflection Point: Central banks are increasing their accumulation of gold despite gold prices being at their all time record highs.

This is a vote of no confidence. Not in America specifically, but in the entire system of fiat currency backed by debt that will never be repaid.

Normally central banks ease off on accumulation when gold prices are high. For broad-based sovereign accumulation to occur despite record high gold prices demonstrates the degree to which higher gold prices in the future are a current catalyst.

But here’s the thing: The central banks who are accumulating gold are more aligned with BRICS countries, and G7 countries are united in their effort to perpetuate the myth of sovereign debt driven fiat currencies backed by a national promise to pay.

So as much as the sovereign debt industry has anchored national economics, the division of the geopolitical spheres of influence into those accumulating gold versus those divesting match historic geopolitical alignments, current aberration notwithstanding.

In short, its the east accumulating gold, while the west works hard to undermine the historical correlation between the gold price and fiat currency debasement.

The Accelerating Supply Crunch

Gold mine production peaked in 2018. New discoveries are down 80% from the early 2000s.The average ore grade has declined from 10 grams per tonne in the 1950s to under 1.5 grams per tonne today.

Finding a world-class deposit now takes 10 to 20 years from discovery to production. Permitting alone consumes 5 to 10 years in most jurisdictions. Capital costs have tripled since 2005.

When gold soars to new highs, previously unmineable grades suddenly become economic. But the lower the grade (generally) the higher the all-in cost of production.

Meanwhile, demand is accelerating. Central bank buying hit record levels. Asian retail demand for physical gold grew 8% year-over-year in 2023.

Exchange-traded fund inflows are returning after two years of outflows.

The math is simple. Annual mine supply is roughly 3,600 tonnes. Annual demand exceeds 5,000 tonnes. The deficit gets filled by recycling and above-ground stocks. But those stocks are finite, and recycling has practical limits. When prices rise sharply, available recycling supply disappears tohoarding.

The supply-demand imbalance is structural, not cyclical.

The Shift from Bonds to Gold

Total G7 sovereign debt sits around $55 trillion. Gold’s total above-ground stock is approximately 212,000 tonnes, valued at roughly $15 trillion at current prices.

If just 10% of G7 sovereign debt holdings shifted to gold, that represents $5.5 trillion in new demand chasing a market with annual production of $520 billion (with gold at $4500.)

[(32150.747*3600)*$4500=$520.84 billion

The current gold market absorbs roughly $500 billion in annual demand.

Adding $5.5 trillion in institutional demand, even spread over five years, means $1.1 trillion in annual incremental buying.

You’re increasing total demand by 220% annually. Price doesn’t move linearly. Price explodes.

At $100,000 per ounce, gold’s total market value would be $215 trillion. That would represent 25% of global financial assets, roughly in line with gold’s historical role in the monetary system before 1971.

The question is not whether gold can reach $100,000. The question is what percentage shift from sovereign debt to gold triggers the move.

Backwardation: The Market’s Distress Signal

Futures markets normally trade in contango. This means future delivery dates command higher prices than spot prices. Contango reflects storage costs, insurance, and the time value of money. You pay more for gold delivered in 12 months than for gold delivered today.

Backwardation is the opposite. Future prices trade below spot prices. Holders of physical metal refuse to sell at prices that should compensate them for waiting. They want the metal now, not promises of metal later.

Gold futures have shown increasing episodes of backwardation since 2019. Silver futures are experiencing the same phenomenon.

Backwardation signals physical shortage. The paper market is decoupling from the physical market. When futures trade below spot, the market is screaming: we don’t trust paper claims. We want physical metal.

This is not normal. This is systemic stress.

Futures Market: The Nude Emporer

The futures market for silver’s nominal value is $4.4 billion. Do the sellers of futures contracts have $4.4 billion worth of physical silver?

No.

Do they have $1 billion worth of physical silver?

Nope. Not even close.

The silver futures market is in a position where it probably can’t deliver any physical silver, and like the cadre of central banks preserving the fraud of a serviceable debt load, the futures market’s large participants rely on their peers to uphold the illusion of a futures market in which no silver exists by rolling over each other’s contracts for cash and cooperatively never asking for delivery of physical.

It’s a sham, a fraud, it’s worse than a Ponzi scheme because in a Ponzi scheme at least some holders are compensated by new investors.

Silver’s Industrial Demand Explosion

Industrial silver demand hit 680.5 million ounces in 2024, a record level representing 59% of total global demand.

This marks the fifth consecutive year of growth in industrial consumption, driven by three converging technological revolutions: solar power expansion, electric vehicle production, and artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Photovoltaic solar panels consumed 197.6 million ounces of silver in 2024, nearly 30% of all industrial demand.

This represents a tripling of solar silver consumption since 2015. Each solar panel requires approximately 20 grams of silver paste to create the electrical pathways that capture and transport energy from photovoltaic cells.

Global solar installations reached 597 gigawatts of new capacity in 2024.

The European Union alone targets 700 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2030.

China is manufacturing and installing solar panels at rates that dwarf previous projections. Every panel needs silver. No viable substitute exists without a tradeoff in efficiency.

New solar cell technologies are increasing silver consumption per panel. TOPCon cells, which surpassed PERC cells as the dominant architecture in 2024, use 50% more silver than previous generation cells.

While manufacturers are working to reduce silver loading through innovations like silver-coated copper powder, these efforts are being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of panel production. The math is simple: even if silver per panel drops 30%, total silver demand from solar still grows when panel production doubles.

Electric vehicles represent the second wave of industrial demand growth. Battery electric vehicles consume 25 to 50 grams of silver per vehicle, 67% to 79% more than internal combustion engines.

The Silver Institute projects that EVs will overtake internal combustion vehicles as the primary source of automotive silver demand by 2027, accounting for 59% of the automotive silver market by 2031.

Global EV sales hit approximately 14 to 16 million units in 2024.

China alone achieved 40% to 42% new energy vehicle penetration.

The automotive sector consumed roughly 80 million ounces of silver in 2024, projected to approach 94 million ounces by 2031.

Silver demand from automotive extends beyond the vehicles themselves. Charging infrastructure requires silver-plated connectors, busbars, and power management systems. Every charging station adds to the demand pool.

The third demand driver is artificial intelligence and data center expansion.

Global IT power capacity has increased 53 times since 2000, rising from 0.93 gigawatts to nearly 50 gigawatts in 2025. This 5,252% increase translates directly into more computing hardware, servers, and physical infrastructure, all of which require silver.

AI data centers operate at extreme power densities. High-end AI servers consume over 20 kilowatts per unit. Silver appears in switchgear, relays, circuit breakers, silver-plated copper connectors, busbars, and thermal management systems. The metal’s combined electrical and thermal conductivity makes it irreplaceable for managing both power distribution and heat dissipation in AI infrastructure.

When Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta collectively announce over $200 billion in data center spending through 2025, each facility requires thousands of servers, and each server contains silver in multiple components.

A large hyperscale data center requires several thousand ounces of silver across its infrastructure.

The 5G network buildout adds another layer of silver consumption. 5G infrastructure requires 30% more silver per unit than 4G.

Network operators are installing thousands of new base stations annually. Each base station uses silver in connections, antennas, and power systems.

Electronics manufacturing consumed approximately 170 to 186 million ounces of silver in 2024, representing 25% to 30% of industrial demand.

This includes smartphones, computers, consumer electronics, and industrial control systems. Every electronic device with a circuit board uses silver.

Medical applications are expanding. Silver’s antimicrobial properties drive demand in wound dressings, medical devices, surgical instruments, and hospital surfaces. Water purification systems use silver to kill bacteria without chemicals.

These applications represent smaller volumes individually, but they add up across billions of units.

Defense and aerospace applications provide sticky, price-insensitive demand. Military electronics, missile guidance systems, radar, satellites, and aircraft all use silver extensively. Defense spending worldwide exceeded $2.7 trillion in 2024, up 9.4% year-over-year.

Silver-plated contacts and connectors are standard in military applications because reliability matters more than cost.

Total industrial silver demand is forecast to surpass 700 million ounces for the first time in 2025.

This compares to total mine supply of approximately 835 million ounces.The deficit must be filled by recycling and above-ground inventories. But as I said, when prices soar, recycling supply becomes hoarded inventory.

The supply-demand imbalance is structural. Solar, EV, AI, and 5G infrastructure represent multi-year buildouts driven by government mandates, corporate commitments, and technological necessity. These are not cyclical demand patterns that fade in recessions.

These are long-term consumption trends backed by trillions in committed capital.

The industrial demand alone would be enough to create a tight market. When you add investment demand, jewelry fabrication, and silverware consumption to industrial numbers exceeding 700 million ounces, the math breaks. Supply does not expand fast enough to meet the demand.

Silver’s role has fundamentally shifted. The metal has moved from decorative and monetary uses to becoming critical infrastructure for the global energy transition and digital transformation. When a material becomes essential to solar power, electric vehicles, AI data centers, and 5G networks simultaneously, scarcity becomes inevitable.

Silver’s Price at $100,000 Gold

The gold-to-silver ratio has averaged 60:1 over the past century. At times of monetary stress, the ratio compresses toward the geological ratio of roughly 8:1.

If gold reaches $100,000 and the gold-to-silver ratio returns to 60:1, silver would trade at $1,667 per ounce.

If the ratio compresses to 30:1, a level seen during the 1980 precious metals peak, silver would trade at $3,333 per ounce.

Silver’s current price around $30 represents a 100:1 ratio at $3,000 gold. The ratio is historically stretched. Mean reversion alone suggests silver has more upside percentage potential than gold.

Add industrial demand deficits to monetary demand, and silver’s move could dwarf gold’s percentage gains.

What $100,000 Gold Means for the Global Economy

Gold at $100,000 means fiat currency has failed. The dollar, euro, yen, and pound would have lost 95% or more of their purchasing power relative to gold.

Central banks would be forced to acknowledge reality: their currencies are backed by nothing except the promise to print more. That promise loses value when everyone stops believing.

Governments would face a choice: default on debt, hyperinflate to pay it off, or return to some form of gold backing to restore confidence.

International trade would shift. Countries would settle in gold, commodities, or currencies with tangible backing. The dollar’s reserve status would end.

Pension funds, insurance companies, and sovereign wealth funds holding bonds would face catastrophic losses. The repricing of sovereign debt would be the largest wealth transfer in history.

Wealth would flow from paper assets to hard assets. Real estate, commodities, productive farmland, and equity in resource companies would soar.

The transition would be chaotic. But the endpoint would be a more honest monetary system, where you don’t create money from nothing and expect it to hold value.

The Coming Gold and Silver Exploration Boom

When gold moves from $3,000 to $10,000, then $30,000, then $100,000, the economics of exploration transform overnight.

Deposits that were uneconomic at $2,000 gold become world-class assets at $10,000 gold. Marginal projects become cash machines.

Companies with resources in the ground see their equity values multiply 10x, 50x, 100x.

History provides the template. During the 1970s gold bull market, junior exploration companies turned thousands into millions. The same pattern played out from 2001 to 2011, when gold went from $250 to $1,900.

The difference this time: the move will be larger and faster. When institutional money panics out of bonds and into hard assets, the flow of capital into precious metals will be a torrent.

Small-cap explorers with quality projects will be acquisition targets. Major producers will pay premiums to replace depleting reserves. Strategic investors will lock up supply before production even begins.

The wealth creation will be generational. But you have to position before the freight train arrives.

Waiting for confirmation means you’re buying at $10,000 gold, not $5,000. You’re paying 10x the price for the same shares.

The skeptics today sound like the Bitcoin skeptics of 2014. They’re anchored to recent history. They can’t imagine a world where the impossible becomes inevitable.

Gold at $100,000 is not a prediction. Gold at $100,000 is a mathematical inevitability of unsustainable debt, declining supply, and accelerating demand.

The only question is timing. And most importantly, it will likely go much higher than that, if society in its current form survives long enough.

Silver is on fire as the beneficiary of both industrial and investment demand at a time where a decade of low investment converges with a spike in demand from novel technology applications.

In particular, Samsung’s silver-based solid‑state battery design, combined with supply deals with Volkswagen and other automakers, implies a step‑change in structural silver demand if it scales beyond niche EV models. The key driver is that silver moves from trace use in electronics to a core, non‑substitutable anode material used in large mass per vehicle.

How Samsung’s battery uses silver

Samsung’s solid‑state cells use a silver‑carbon (Ag‑C) composite layer as the anode, stabilizing lithium metal and preventing dendrite formation while boosting energy density and cycle life. Estimates from industry commentary and Samsung‑related technical coverage suggest each cell may use up to about 5 grams of silver.

A typical 100 kWh EV pack (roughly 200 cells in many pack architectures) would therefore embed around 1 kg of silver, versus roughly 25–50 g of silver in today’s lithium‑ion EVs that mainly use it in inverters and electronics. This is an order‑of‑magnitude increase in per‑vehicle silver intensity, and the silver is locked up for perhaps 15–20 years given the longer battery life.

Scale of potential demand from EVs

Recent estimates place global silver mine output around 820–850 million ounces annually, while total demand already exceeds about 1.1–1.16 billion ounces, implying a structural deficit before batteries. If 20% of roughly 80 million–plus global light‑vehicle production adopted Samsung‑style silver solid‑state packs (around 16 million EVs), silver demand from this one application could reach roughly 16,000 metric tons, or about 514 million ounces per year.

That incremental demand alone would equal around 60–65% of current global mine production, before considering solar, electronics, and existing EV‑related silver usage. More aggressive scenarios (50–80% adoption of silver‑based solid‑state batteries) would mathematically push required silver above current annual supply, forcing rationing, substitution attempts, or much higher prices.

Role of Volkswagen and other OEMs

Samsung SDI is positioning these batteries for high‑end EVs first, under supply and development agreements with major OEMs such as BMW and Volkswagen, with next‑generation evaluation vehicles targeted in the 2026 time frame. Volkswagen has already committed tens of billions of euros to a unified cell and solid‑state roadmap via PowerCo and partners like QuantumScape, and any decision to standardize on an Ag‑C solid‑state chemistry for volume segments would rapidly scale silver demand.

Analyst and industry pieces note that large legacy OEMs signing multi‑year cell procurement deals with Samsung effectively front‑load the demand shock: once platforms are locked in, the silver requirement becomes embedded in multi‑year production plans. This reduces demand elasticity in the short and medium term because OEMs cannot easily re‑engineer packs to use less silver without redesigning the entire cell.

How this shifts silver’s demand profile

Today, industrial uses (solar, electronics, existing auto) already dominate silver demand and are responsible for multi‑year physical deficits. Samsung’s architecture upgrades silver from a supporting conductive metal to a mission‑critical energy‑storage material, which:

• Ties demand to global EV adoption rather than just electronics volumes.

• Locks metal in long‑lived assets, delaying recycling flows for 15–20 years.

Because silver in the anode is safety‑ and performance‑critical, substitution is technically harder than in, for example, solder or simple contacts, which lowers demand elasticity and tends to make demand more inelastic to price spikes. In combination with ongoing mine‑supply constraints and existing deficits, this creates a credible pathway for persistent upward pressure on silver prices if Samsung and its partners like Volkswagen roll out silver‑based solid‑state batteries at scale.

Risks to Silver’s Bull Run

Its obviously not all going to be peaches and cream.

The higher the silver price climbs, the greater the incentive to switch to cheaper albeit less optimal materials.

Major solar panel manufacturers, including Chinese giant LONGi Green Energy, have recently announced a shift from using costly silver to more abundant and cheaper their new solar cells. This move is driven by the surging price of silver and the need to reduce production costs to make solar energy more competitive.

But the reality is the investment demand for silver, combined with the industrial applications for which their are no cheaper alternatives than silver, will likely see demand continue to pressure supply - even despite the sudden tsunami of investment underway into silver mining.

Maximum leverage to silver’s pricing is found alongside maximum risk in junior mining companies who have not yet experienced the lift of more mature ones. With that in mind, may I present:

Top Ten Silver Companies Trading Under $1

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Developments over the Christmas break in the geopolitical realm have everyone’s heads spinning. All pretence of diplomacy and international law have been curbsided.

I asked Deep Seek what China’s response might be to the unilateral seizure of Venezuela by the Trump regime, in view of its $90 billion investment in the country’s oil infrastructure since the 2000’s.

Deep Seek said:

China consistently advocates mutual respect, equality, and mutual benefit among nations and opposes any form of unilateralism and hegemonic behavior. On the Venezuelan issue, the Chinese government supports the Venezuelan government’s efforts to safeguard national sovereignty, stability, and development. China’s investment and cooperation in Venezuela are based on the principles of equality and mutual benefit, aiming to promote local economic and social development and improve people’s livelihoods, and are in accordance with international law and the basic norms of international relations. China calls on relevant countries to abide by international law and the basic norms of international relations and refrain from any actions that could complicate the regional situation.

That’s rich.

China’s unilateral actions in various territories - most notably, Tibet - demonstrate an unironic hypocrisy that is consistent with totalitarian regimes.

The Trump regime’s categorization of the illegal abduction of Maduro and his wife as some kind of legitimate law enforcement action is the same brand of state-sponsored nonsense.

But with Trump’s action, the mask of democracy is ripped from the American face, and it scowls the world with naked ambition and knives out.

One might argue Trump checkmated China by accomplishing militarily what China was achieving economically.

China’s Venezuelan investments include:

1. Oil-For-Loan Agreements (2007–2016):

China extended roughly $50–67 billion in loans to Venezuela through oil-for-loan deals, primarily managed by the China Development Bank. These loans were to be repaid with oil shipments. A significant portion was directed toward oil production, infrastructure, and social projects.

2. Direct Investments in Oil Projects:

Chinese state-owned companies (like CNPC, Sinopec, and CNOOC) invested directly in oil ventures in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt and other regions. Estimates suggest $10–20 billion was committed for equity stakes, drilling, and upgrading heavy crude processing facilities.

3. Infrastructure Financing:

Beyond oil, Chinese funds supported related infrastructure (e.g., power grids, refineries, housing), but the oil sector received the largest share. Some reports indicate that $8–10 billion was earmarked for oil infrastructure alone under bilateral agreements.

To say China is deeply invested in Venezuela is no understatement.

Despite Deep Seek’s algorithmic platitudes, China will retaliate. Most likely in subtle Chinese style.

How exactly?

Financial and legal retaliation

• Launch investor–state arbitration and other legal claims for expropriation of Chinese assets or contracts linked to Venezuelan oil projects, using bilateral investment treaties and contract law.

• Freeze or quietly slow authorizations, permits, and approvals for U.S. firms and financial institutions operating in China, increasing regulatory scrutiny or fines on U.S. companies as leverage.

• Impose targeted sanctions on selected U.S. entities involved in Venezuelan oil seizures (energy firms, shipping companies, security contractors) and restrict their access to the Chinese market.

Pressure on U.S. business in China

• Tighten enforcement of cybersecurity, antitrust, and national security rules against major U.S. tech, automotive, and finance companies, raising their operating costs or forcing divestments.

• Use informal tools (tax inspections, data-localization demands, supply-chain audits) to signal that U.S. firms are less welcome unless Washington moderates its stance over Venezuela.

• Slow-roll or block mergers, acquisitions, and IPOs involving U.S. investors, denying Chinese regulatory approvals needed for large cross‑border deals.

Trade, export controls, and currency tools

• Impose new export controls on critical inputs where China is a key supplier (for example, some battery materials or rare earth processing) to hurt U.S. industrial and defense supply chains.

• Raise tariffs or impose technical barriers on selected U.S. imports, especially politically sensitive goods from key U.S. states, to create domestic pressure on Washington.

• Shift more oil and commodity trade settlement with partners away from the dollar and toward yuan or mixed-currency arrangements, deepening efforts already visible in energy finance.

Geopolitical and security moves

• Increase diplomatic and material support to U.S. adversaries or rivals (for example, greater energy, financing, or arms deals with sanctioned states) to complicate U.S. strategy elsewhere.

• Step up naval or air presence in regions important to U.S. interests—such as the Western Pacific or even limited presence in the Caribbean—under the banner of protecting overseas assets and shipping.

• Accelerate security cooperation, infrastructure finance, and technology projects with Latin American states other than Venezuela, presenting Beijing as a long‑term partner versus a coercive U.S. role.

Information, diplomatic, and multilateral steps

• Lead campaigns in the UN and other forums to frame the U.S. move as unlawful expropriation and a violation of sovereignty, rallying developing countries concerned about their own exposure.

• Use state and social media to highlight U.S. “resource grab” narratives, stressing the precedent for other countries that host large Chinese investments.

• Slow cooperation with the U.S. on unrelated dossiers (trade talks, climate, counter‑narcotics, or maritime issues), compartmentalizing or stalling negotiations until Washington offers concessions on Venezuela-related claims.

Besides the Chinese vengence on these multiple fronts, there are other unintended consequences that annexation of Venezuela may have for the US.

Annexing Venezuela Destabilizes Geopolitical Order

We’re now well used to Trump’s overt vandalization of institutions and normal intergovernmental relationships. By abducting Maduro without congressional approval, it is to be expected that Venezuela is not the end of this regime’s hegemonic ambition.

Veiled threats to Colombia, Greenland/Denmark, and Canada notwithstanding, the bigger uncertainty is how will Putin, Xi and Modi interpret this leadership by example? Has Trump just licensed international smash-and-grab resource piracy?

Venezuelan Oil Production Resumption

Increased Venezuelan oil flows into the U.S. would primarily hurt U.S. producers by adding low‑cost barrels into an already well‑supplied market, pressuring prices and margins while boosting the relative position of complex refiners that can run heavy crude. Over time, this can squeeze upstream profitability, delay investment, and shift value from domestic drillers to refiners and consumers.

The US has invested up to $100 billion into Canadian oil sands producers and transportation infrastructure. If heavy oil inventories in the Western Hemisphere are doubled through the addition of Venezuelan stocks, the profitability and yield from those investments are negatively pressured.

Though, recall, Trump’s ambition for $50 oil looks a lot more credible if he was to exercise his control over Venezuela to shut in production, or otherwise ensure it remains offline for the foreseeable future.

A Likely Story

Regardless of the myriad ways in which this could further agitate markets, one thing is crystal clear: The gold and silver trade are likely going to continue as the thematic all-stars of asset classes, with the Canadian mining and exploration sector the most likely beneficiary.