➡ The article discusses the rising value of silver, which has reached $92 an ounce, due to a combination of factors including a deficit in supply, increased demand from industries like solar panels and electric vehicles, and geopolitical issues. It also highlights the growing distrust in fiat currencies as US debt surpasses $38 trillion, leading investors to turn to hard assets like gold, copper, and now silver. The article suggests that this surge in silver’s value is not a temporary spike, but the start of a significant shift in the financial landscape.
➡ The article discusses the increasing trend towards digital currencies and the potential risks they pose, such as being easily tracked and controlled. It highlights the efforts in Switzerland and Sweden to preserve the use of cash, as well as the rising value of silver as a reliable asset amidst financial instability. The author warns about the dangers of relying too heavily on digital systems, especially in the event of power outages or cyber attacks. He also mentions a giveaway of physical silver on the Silver News Daily Telegram group.
➡ Silver, a crucial metal for green energy and technology, is in high demand but supply is dwindling. This is causing prices to skyrocket and manufacturers are struggling to keep up. Meanwhile, the U.S. is facing a bond crisis as countries and central banks are buying less U.S. debt, leading to rising interest rates. This, along with the U.S.’s increasing debt and declining manufacturing, is causing a shift away from the U.S. dollar and towards precious metals like gold and silver.
➡ The article discusses the changing perception of silver, which has evolved from being seen as a lesser alternative to gold to a strategic asset in global resource wars. This shift, referred to as the “Great Repositioning,” has led to silver being added to the critical minerals list due to its importance in clean energy, tech infrastructure, and national security. The article also highlights the increasing debt and currency debasement in the U.S., tracing it back to the decision to remove the dollar’s gold backing in 1971. Lastly, it points out that despite silver’s rising value, many in the financial world failed to anticipate this trend, leading to a scramble to secure silver assets.
➡ Silver, unlike gold, is not just a store of value but also a crucial component in many products, making it more volatile. Its demand doesn’t decrease with rising prices, especially as it’s essential for tech and industrial giants. This makes silver a unique investment, bridging the gap between the old financial system and the future economy. However, investing in silver requires careful decision-making due to its potential for significant price fluctuations.
➡ The market is expected to remain strong due to the Federal Reserve’s likely actions, such as printing more money and controlling the yield curve. Gold is predicted to have a good year due to its value compared to the weakening dollar. There are predictions of a significant increase in the value of silver, supported by factors like a failing paper currency system, high industrial demand, and government recognition of silver as a strategic asset. However, rising rates could negatively impact the stock market and make things more expensive, leading to more inflationary pressure and a potential recession.
➡ The article suggests that silver and gold will become more valuable in the future due to supply and demand dynamics. Silver, in particular, may experience more price fluctuations due to a recent shortage. The author advises long-term investors not to worry about short-term price drops and to consider their personal financial goals when deciding when to sell. The article ends with a warning that the system that has kept silver prices low is failing, and a significant price increase is imminent.

No government right now can solve 38 trillion in debt and counting. We are past the Rubicon of an easy solution. A good leader would tell the truth about that. We wouldn’t go to war. We wouldn’t go into false promises. Central banks have been stacking over a thousand tons a year since we weaponized the dollar in 2022. In other words, it’s not just the gold camp anymore that sees this. And there’s a reason why central banks hold more gold than U.S. bonds or U.S. treasuries. So it’s not just the gold executives or the gold bugs, which we’ve been for decades.

And I think we’ve been right for decades. They’re admitting you’re watching Silver News Daily. Subscribe for more. Silver just did the unthinkable. It blasted through $92 an ounce, catching nearly every mainstream analyst flat footed. But while most investors are still rubbing their eyes in disbelief, Matthew Peepenberg is sounding the alarm. This isn’t the end of a silver rally. It’s the beginning of something far more explosive. A move so violent, so rapid and so unrelenting, it’s about to flip the entire financial narrative upside down. Think about it. When was the last time silver moved this fast, this far, with this much conviction? Not in a decade, not in a generation.

Maybe not ever. And yet here we are standing at the edge of what Pepenberg calls a full blown awakening. Because $92 is not the destination. It’s the signal flare. It’s the wake up call. It’s the financial system screaming that something has snapped beneath the surface. This rally isn’t built on hype. It’s built on fundamentals that are stacking up like dynamite. From industrial shortages to geopolitical chaos, from vanishing inventories to central banks stockpiling hard assets, the world is rush rushing towards silver like never before. So if you’re still watching from the sidelines thinking you’ve missed the move, think again.

According to Peepenberg, the real move hasn’t even started yet. Yeah, I just posted today my on the Von Greyer’s website at, you know, vongrayers. Gold or gold Switzerland just published my look ahead, look behind. And I said you know, there’s been a lot of change this year and we can, we certainly have to look at 2025 with the specific headlines but before we wring our hands, the irony is the bigger picture, nothing’s really changed. The the again the more things change, the more they say the same. The the headlines coming to 2025 about making America Great.

These are certainly laudable things. With a new president, a new White House administration coming into this year, we had a lot of hope and a lot of frustration, depending on your politics. I’m not here to give a political opinion. I’ve always said it really doesn’t matter what party or what person’s in the White House. At these current debt levels, we’re past the Rubicon of an easy solution. But we came in with a lot of hope that we would cut spending through things like USAID and doge, that we’d have the External Revenue Service through tariffs to bring in more revenue, which I’ve said is kind of ironic.

I don’t think we’re going to win the hearts and the minds of the world through tariffs. That’s a debatable issue. But the key thing I saw in 2025, all of these plans, all of these hopes, have not cut our spending or our deficit levels or our debt levels at all. Quite the opposite. And what the real signal for me, at least in 2025, was Liberation Day. It wasn’t very liberating. We all know what it did to the markets. But Liberation Day was supposed to be a turning point with these tariffs. And it’s not about the politics of the tariffs or the art of the deal or whether you’re pro Trump or anti Trump.

I’m not going to get into that rabbit hole. It’s what the real signal was on Liberation Day wasn’t the fact that he had to pivot in a couple days as part of the art of the deal. The real. The real signal in April of 2025, very boring, but very critical to understand, was that the bond markets went south. They were crickets at the treasury auction. No one was buying U.S. treasuries. And that forced the taco move they call Trump always chickens out. I don’t think it’s that. It’s just the bond market wouldn’t let us prosecute a trade war, a tariff war, whether you like that or not, we couldn’t afford it.

The markets tanked immediately. We had to pull back on our strong chest puffing language. Again, it’s neither partisan, it’s not left or right. It just we couldn’t afford it because the bond market wouldn’t allow us to do it. And so I think what that signals is that the bond market wouldn’t allow Trump to prosecute a trade war because rates were going up and bond prices were going down and no one was buying U.S. treasuries. It’s the same thing that Happened to Powell when he tried to do higher for longer to be transitory inflation, which we all know is intransitory.

But the debt, when he raised rates, the debt was too high. It forced him by 2024 to start reducing rates again. The debt in America is what’s stopping America, whether you believe the policies are good or bad, from really executing policies. Because the American dollar, the American iou, the US tenure, the US treasury and the American system simply isn’t trusted as much in 2025 as it was five or six years prior for all kinds of reasons. And this to understand how silver just vaulted to dollars, we have to rewind the tape and look at the forces that brought us here.

Because this wasn’t a random spike, it was a detonation years in the making. First, silver’s structural deficit has been relentless. For six straight years, global silver demand has outpaced supply. Mining output hasn’t kept up. And above ground inventories have been drained to multi decade lows. At the same time, the metal’s role in the real economy has exploded. Solar panels, electric vehicles and high performance electronics are devouring silver faster than it can be pulled from the ground. Then came the geopolitical wildcards. China, the world’s refining powerhouse, slammed the brakes on silver exports, pulling the rug out from under western supply chains just as demand peaked.

That one move turned a tight market into a powder keg. But the real spark, it wasn’t industrial, it was monetary. As inflation refused to cool and US debt spiraled past $38 trillion, faith in fiat currencies began to crumble. Investors didn’t run to bonds or tech stocks, they ran to hard assets. First gold, then copper, and now silver. This surge to $92 is the convergence of all these forces. A broken supply chain, insatiable industrial demand and a global financial system cracking under its own weight. Pepenberg’s warning isn’t about the past. It’s about where all this pressure is heading.

Next light in an otherwise kind of, I hate to say it, dark horizon in terms of the E, the tokenization, the digitalization, just about everything, including currencies. And I have to say before I laud Swiss and Swedish attempts to kind of push back, I’m not convinced it’s going to stop Europe and the west in general from eventually going cashless. But it is, as you said, nice to see a little resistance here. And you know, before we get into Sweden, in Switzerland in particular, two countries for which my colleague Ian von Greiers is a citizen of, so we certainly talk and Think about this a lot.

They’re amazing countries for different reasons. And Switzerland in general has this tremendous history of direct democracy. Switzerland has many countries in one, but they share a real strong respect for the citizens views. You need to have citizen direct involvement in major decisions in the country, which ironically in America, the home of freedom and democracy, we don’t even see the same level of. And I think for folks who get a chance to come to Switzerland, it’s more than just chocolate and cheese and beautiful horizons. There’s a really strong ethic in Switzerland about citizen rights and citizen voting.

And this pushback against going cashless is an example of that in Switzerland too, as many countries in one, the, the, the French side of Switzerland, Geneva is very different than the German side in Zurich and very different than the Italian section in Lugano, all of which are very beautiful but very different. But again, they all share this, this interest in being directly involved in their citizens and also in, in their citizens decisions and in their government’s decisions. You know, on, on the flip side, you know, Switzerland is clearly, if anyone has been there and certainly I, I’m there all the time.

It’s very app and car dominant. Only about 25% of transactions in Switzerland are in cash. And the idea is innovation is key. And there is this thing called crypto valley in Switzerland. There’s over a thousand fintech and blockchain companies and they’re all leaders in integrating digital technologies and currencies. Yet on the flip side of that is this liberty movement, which has already acquired over a hundred thousand signatures, so they can go to the upper and lower houses in Switzerland and they’re pushing really to enshrine cash, coins and notes as part of the Constitution because they don’t want to see the digitalization of all things, including the Swiss franc, for a lot of the reasons that you and I have talked about, or Elijah and I have talked about with each other, with other guests, that there is something very effective and very efficient and very speedy about digitalized currencies.

They certainly move faster than certain swift systems and other things, but we also know they’re very programmable, trackable and ultimately seizable. So as things go from bad to worse, which we’ll talk about later, and I’m not saying this happens tomorrow or next week, but in an oh moment, in a geopolitical oh moment, in a financial oh moment, having digital currencies would be a lot easier to control, take and manipulate than cash in a Folgers can, so to speak. So coins and notes still matter to some of us. No matter what the official narrative is, there is clearly a Trend in the US and certainly in Europe by 2029 to be more and more digital.

So this liberty movement in Switzerland, I think, is, is, is a light, is a ray of hope, and we’ll see. That’ll probably be decided in 2026, as you mentioned as well, Sweden is doing the same thing. It’s Riksbank, it’s central bank is talking about a referendum where, at least where they make it clear that essential goods like cash at grocery stores or at doctor’s offices or for certain services, that cash will be a. Matthew Pipenberg isn’t mincing words. He’s looking straight into the camera and telling investors to wake up. In his view, Silver’s run to $92 is not a price anomaly.

It’s a symptom of something much bigger. What we’re witnessing, he says, is the early tremor of a seismic financial shift. And anyone still treating silver like a niche commodity is about to be steamrolled by reality. Pepenberg points to the sheer disbelief in the mainstream, how Wall street and retail alike have ignored silver’s rising signals for years, dismissing it as volatile, secondary, irrelevant. But now, with silver exploding past $90, the narrative has flipped and it’s happening too fast for most to process. He likens the current moment to standing on a train track, watching the headlight barreling toward you and still believing it’s just a flashlight.

The truth, he argues, is that silver is no longer just a store of value. It’s becoming a lifeline in a world where traditional finance is losing credibility by the day. And this isn’t speculation. It’s happening because of hard math, relentless deficits, weaponized supply chains, monetary overreach, and a global awakening to the fragility of paper wealth. Pepenberg’s call is clear. Either wake up now and position yourself accordingly or keep sleeping and miss the most explosive revaluation silver has ever seen or a hot dog in cash anymore. And certainly I see that in France in particular, it’s harder and harder just to bring out a euro and actually use it in certain places.

And this trend towards digitalization, I’m afraid, is. I think that train has left the station and it’s coming. What happens in Sweden and Switzerland with these referendums and these upper and lower house decisions, I hope pass. I think they will. I think that shows a little bit of a pushback. I know in, in Sweden, it’s, They’re really. It’s their defense ministry that’s saying, look you know, it’s great to be prepared and innovative, but we’re way too dependent, vulnerable on electronics and electronic vulnerability in cyber warfare. And what, what happens if there is some type of, of major blast in the electronic systems? Anyone who lives in Europe, and certainly I’ve spent a lot of time in Spain too, which is kind of our Florida here.

Spain has a lot of power outages. We’ve had a lot in southern Europe. I experienced them in France, less so in Switzerland. But those are little hints that what would happen if we quote unquote, lost that electrical web that we think is permanent and immortal. So these type of concerns about just vulnerability and defense are one thing. I think the larger concern that you and I and your audience has is really more about the programmability, trackability and seizability of these digital currencies. So again, we’ll, we’ll keep our fingers crossed in 2026. Sweden and Switzerland are very important countries, but they’re not the whole world.

Will there be a contagion effect? Will other countries jump on? We’ll see. But sadly the, the momentum you and I see in the States and everywhere in the world and what I see in Europe too is increasingly more and more talk and more and more direction towards cards, apps and eventually central bank digital currency, stablecoins, other types of basically Diet Coke versions of central bank digital currencies. In the US Stablecoin is just a central bank digital currency issued by Fintech and, and by commercial banks. But it’s, it’s the same thing. So you know, these are, these are rays of hope.

But you know, Dungan, I’m not going to promise that the world in Europe is waking up. But it’s, it’s certainly nice to see an effort to remind folks that cash and coins still matter and they should, should still be used for, for Pete’s sake, at a grocery store or a sporting event or more essential things like a doctor. And I see a lot of older citizens where I live in, in the countryside. It’s very sad. I mean, they literally don’t know how to use certain cards. Even, even trash pickup in Europe you need a special card for.

Some people can’t afford those cards or don’t how to use those cards. They still have purses with coins. They’re innocent, trusting people. That’s the saddest part of all. They really don’t have much choice. They really do trust their systems. They assume this is innovation. They assume this is better. They’re getting more and more used to it. But I, I feel they don’t see the darker side of what digitalization and certainly e kronas, e dollars, e euros mean for the next 20 years out and what the next generation is going to be facing, especially if things go wrong.

And that’s when, that’s when the digitalization darker side will show up. But again, these are all things we’ve talked about in the past and we’ll see where we’re going. But 2026 would be nice to see the Swiss once again do something different than the rest of the Eurozone for something that most people don’t talk about enough. Just before we get going, we just launched the official Silver News Daily Telegram. To kick things off, we’re running a 10 ounce silver giveaway. Yes, real physical silver. Not a voucher, not digital credits, actual bullion. This telegram will be our new home for real time silver discussions, market insights, collection picks and everything precious metals.

It’s where the community truly comes alive. Here’s how to enter the 10 ounce silver giveaway. Be subscribed to Silver News Daily on YouTube, turn on the notification bell, comment 10 ounce giveaway on three separate videos, be an active member of the Telegram group and say hi. Once we hit 500 Active Telegram members, we’ll pick one lucky winner to receive 10 ounces of silver shipped directly to you. So get in early, stay active. The brass tacks is the grassroots of what we’re really experiencing. And in France, where I also have where residences, I mean even a simple credit card transaction to do an online purchase or at a grocery store, sometimes you have to go through three or four steps to confirm your security.

It slows down your freedom of transaction in the name of efficiency, but it actually feels like more and more control. There are times I’m literally ordering things online. I just stop. It’s too many steps and those are anecdotal examples of frustrations, but they’re hardly life altering. But when things, and if things, and I do think things are only going to get worse in terms of civil liberties, in terms of economic conditions, in terms of centralization and government desperation, with their backs against these debt walls, these type of inconveniences of triple notifications and codes, this X, Y and Z will become crippling.

And the more that this is centralized and programmable and trackable and the more that this becomes out of our control, the more we’re going to feel more vulnerable. Right now there’s still quote unquote good times or things haven’t gotten desperate. Although there’s plenty of evidence that they are. We’re not nearly in the type of frustration range that we could be in. And again, we hope we’re wrong. But you know, we’re already seeing the signs of these frustrations everywhere. And the narrowing of liberties and the narrowing of free choice, even the choice to use coins and cash in your wallet is slowly eroding.

It’s death by a thousand cuts. But this is nothing new to debt broken systems. The dishonesty, the manipulation, the misnarratives, the mal information pours through. And what we’re being told is good for our efficiency and transactional authority is actually the very opposite of that. So again, let’s, you know, give a round of applause to the folks in Switzerland and Sweden for at least raising the issue. But they’re fighting a big tide, that’s for sure. Silver isn’t riding some speculative hype train. It’s being pulled by the engine of real world necessity. And nowhere is that more clear than in the industrial chaos unfolding beneath the surface.

Right now. Silver is the single most indispensable metal in the energy transition. And demand is screaming higher with no off switch in sight. Solid state batteries, already hailed as the future of electric vehicles, rely on silver for conductivity and efficiency. The solar industry has undergone a transformation too, with the rise of topcon solar cells, an advanced technology that uses more silver per watt than anything before it. This isn’t some niche use case. It’s the foundation of the global push for green energy. Add to that the boom in AI data centers, high frequency motherboards and military grade electronics, and you begin to see what Pepenberg is shouting.

Silver isn’t optional, it’s critical. And when a material becomes both irreplaceable and scarce, price becomes an afterthought. That’s exactly what we’re seeing now. Manufacturers are no longer debating whether they’ll pay more, they’re debating how much pain they can absorb just to keep production running. Industrial demand has outpaced mine supply five years in a row, and yet no major producer is stepping in to fill the gap. This disconnect is turning silver into a bottlenecked pressure valve. And $92 may be just the first burst of what happens when that pressure finally erupts. And I want to respect how boring the bond market is for listeners.

I get it, and I don’t need to get wonky on bonds, and no one wants to hear it. But bonds are the IOUs of our sovereign nation. It’s how we’ve survived since we outsourced the American dream to China. And manufacturing China around 2001 during the World Trade Organization fanfare where Clinton was saying, it’s great, they’re going to buy all our blue jeans and widgets. What he left out is no, they’re not going to buy it. They’re going to manufacture it for us and then send it back to us. So when we outsourced the American dream in 2001, that was a major mistake.

We don’t manufacture anymore. We’re not the world’s greatest manufacturer as we were in 1944 when we were the world reserve currency in a gold backed dollar. We were the world’s greatest manufacturers then. Now we’re the world’s greatest offshore. We’re not the world’s greatest creditor, we’re the world’s greatest debtor. So there’s been a major change from the flags of Iwo Jima and Clark Gable and the great American narrative, whether we like it or not. And so if we’re not manufacturing, if we’re not producing, then we have to have somebody, we have to have something to sustain our system.

And sadly, in the last 25 years, the major tailwind for American growth isn’t productivity. And the major tailwind is really debt. So we have to issue more and more debt as long as there are buyers of that debt. That worked. That was the extravagant privilege. That was our currency. Your problem in the 70s. But if we’ve noticed, certainly in 2025, Japan and China, the perennial buyers of U.S. treasuries, just aren’t there anymore. Japan’s had to dump U.S. treasuries to support its yen. China, which used to have 40% of its FX reserves in US treasuries as of 2025, has less than 1% in US treasuries.

So there is less natural demand for Uncle Sam’s IOUs. Our bond. That is a bond crisis. If no one is buying our bonds, the bond prices go down. And again, this is why central banks now hold more gold than they do US Bonds. I’m not making these facts up. There’s symptoms of a world that’s turning away from the IOU of Uncle Sam because he’s so much in debt. Because he’s so much in debt. So when there’s less bond purchasing from China or Japan or from central banks who now prefer gold openly. I’m not just saying this is a gold executive.

They prefer gold as a tier one strategic reserve asset over Uncle Sam’s sacred 10 year US Treasury. That means bond prices go down. If bond prices go down, the Yields go up. And yields are the real measure of interest rate expense. And there’s nothing that terrifies any sovereign nation, and in the US in particular, more than rising yields. Because if yields go up on US Treasuries, that means the cost of their, their debt, their interest expense on their debt, which is already over a trillion, gets even more painful. So it’s absolutely essential to keep those yields down.

If China, Japan and central banks aren’t buying treasuries in 2025 or 2026 like they did in 2015 or 2012, that means somebody else to buy those bonds. I know it’s boring, but that somebody is the central bank. It’s the Fed. And what did they buy it with? Money. Literally mouse clicked at the Eccles Building out of thin air. When they expand money in the balance sheet at the Fed, as they’re going to do and as they’ve already started in December. Now, combine that industrial surge with a tightening noose on supply, and you get a market that’s not just hot, it’s combustible.

Silver’s rally to $92 wasn’t just about demand rising. It was about supply getting strangled in real time. The biggest shock came when China, home to over two dozen London good delivery refineries, suddenly restricted silver exports. That move didn’t just slow things down, it choked off a major artery of global silver flow, leaving Western buyers scrambling and premiums spiking overnight. But this isn’t just about one country’s policy on a global level. Silver mine production has been stagnating for years. New discoveries are rare, development timelines are long, and existing operations are running into cost, inflation permitting delays and declining ore grades.

This isn’t something you fix with a bigger drill. It’s systemic. And while all this is happening, central banks and state institutions are hoarding more metal off market market, often quietly, leaving even less for industrial and retail buyers. As Pepenberg highlights, the result is a market with zero slack. When demand jumps, there’s no cushion. And that’s exactly why prices aren’t just rising, they’re vaulting. The rally we’re seeing now isn’t speculative froth. It’s the inevitable outcome of a system that’s been underinvested, misunderstood and mispriced for far too long. Silver isn’t scarce because investors are hoarding. It’s scarce because the world needs more of it than ever.

And the supply faucet has been welded halfway shut, even or bow to the US dollar in the way it had to do 50 years ago. Because we went too far out on that branch of debt, too far on that branch of arrogance. It is now our currency, our problem. Because no one wants our treasuries at auction. They want a higher premium for our IOUs because we’re 38 trillion in debt. And because we weaponize that dollar and that currency in 2022, that does not make me anti American. I thought that policy in 2022 was a terrible mistake.

Regardless of what you think, Zelensky, it’s irrelevant. When you weaponize the world reserve currency, you’re going to debase its trust. And trust, as John Robino has said, is falling across the horizon. Not just in politics of the dollar, not just in the U.S. but in Europe and elsewhere. Trust in these policymakers, these central bankers, these central planners. Their dishonesty, their manipulation certainly has deteriorated extravagantly since COVID But the world, in its review of the US dollar since 1971 is we’re finally after 54 years, reaping the reckoning of our own arrogance, our own entitlement, our own idea that our currency, your problem, would be immortal.

Now it’s our currency, our problem. And the world’s moving away from that currency. Not overnight. Not the end of the world of currency, not the end of the dollar. But our systems are dishonest. And the invisible tax of inflation, which is an open lie, the CPI scale, the invisible tax that citizens suffer every day, in addition to all the dishonesty, all the manipulation, all the malinformation, their currency is a melting ice cube very slowly and then all at once. And that’s why gold and silver ripping in 2024, 2025, and will continue to go up into 2026.

Not because gold is like a Nvidia trade or a tech trade or in a simple, some type of strange new bull market. It is part of a, of a, of a rapidly changing credit system, the end of a credit cycle. Gold and silver are rising simply because paper money in general and the world reserve currency particular aren’t to be. They’re so debased. We’re in a bull market in these precious metals because they’re real money. We’re in a bear market in paper currencies because they’re bad money and they’ve gotten worse over the last 54 years. That does not mean gold and silver only go straight up into the right and then you don’t have retracements or pullbacks.

That is not what I’m saying. But Egon has been saying this for 25, 30 years. This is nothing new in 2025 or 2026. It began in earnest in 1971. So when I look back or look forward, we can look at the specific headlines of the year. Key moments like April, or key legislation like the Genius act, or key events like de dollarization or the BIS making gold a tier one asset, or what’s happening on the Comex markets. These were all headlines in 2025. But they’re just symptoms of a problem that began 54 years ago. When we welched on the Constitution, we welched on the rest of the world, and we took the dollar, the world reserve currency, off of gold backing.

It’s not a gold bug case. It’s history 101. We’re just debasing the currency lying about and the dollar. You measure your wealth, your portfolio, your savings account, your checking account, even your precious Met. Something has fundamentally changed in how the world views silver. It’s no longer just the cheaper cousin of gold. It has crossed a line, becoming a strategic asset in a geopolitical tug of war. Pepenberg calls this the Great Repositioning, where silver isn’t just a hedge or a commodity, it’s now a bargaining chip in a global resource war. And the US Government just made it official by adding silver to the critical minerals list, recognizing its essential role not only in clean energy and tech infrastructure, but also in military and national security applications.

This shift isn’t symbolic, it’s strategic. Nations are scrambling to secure materials that can fuel their technological dominance and sustain economic sovereignty. Silver, once brushed aside by policymakers, is now being viewed in the same category as rare earths and lithium. China sees it, the US sees it, and the market is finally catching on. In this new reality, price becomes less about investor speculation and more about resource control. Silver is morphing into a form of economic weaponry, a material you need to possess not just to profit, but to compete. Pepenberg argues that most investors are still pricing silver like it’s part of the old system.

But in this new era of geopolitical fragmentation and resource nationalism, silver is becoming the metal of necessity. And as that narrative takes hold, the valuation models that once capped silver’s upside are being shattered in real time. Symptoms of that in 2025. These desperate moves, these emergency acts we kept seeing for the tariffs, the Genius act, to DOGE and usaid, to talking about gold revaluation, to even possibly a gold backed Treasury. These are all symptoms of a system that’s cracking, that’s breaking down, and is looking for desperate answers, laudable to try them, laudable to encourage you know, bringing manufacturing back to the US Laudable to try and get tariffs to pay for that.

Laudable to try and cut spending at us Laudable to try and do this Doge initiative. But they’re really guppy, guppy solutions to a whale of a problem. The problem is it’s not even Trump’s fault, it’s not even Biden’s fault, or, or Obama’s fault. It goes farther back. Every administration goes further and further into debt and every administration knows that it can mouse click trillions of dollars to pay for that debt. That debases the currency. That’s why the man on the street, top 10% or bottom 10%, feels this invisible tax of the debasement of their purchasing power.

And those are the headlines of. But those have been the headlines for years. It’s the slow death of the currency because of a decision made at the time of my birth. Fifty years ago, more than 50 years ago, in 1971, when the US went off its gold backing, which was promised by our Constitution in the very first article, we reneged not only on ourselves, we nigged on the world that relied on that post Bretton woods promise that the world reserve currency would be dollar backed. We reneged that in 1971. And then we enjoyed the temporary prosperity of being able to spend with impunity in the US as the home of the world reserve currency.

We were able to spend with impunity because no matter what we did, someone was going to buy our U.S. treasuries. And if we couldn’t afford it, the Fed would print money to give it to us. And those are the good times. But that was when US debt was 250 billion and the debt to GDP ratio was 38%. You fast forward to 2025, the year in review, and the debt to gdp ratio isn’t 38%, it’s 125%. And the debt isn’t 250 billion, it’s 38 trillion. So we’re not the same America we were in 1971, and the world knows this now because in 1971 we reneged on the world reserve currency, it being redeemable in gold.

They had to eat that sandwich because we’re the world reserve currency. And not only did we do that, by 1973, we created a petrodollar. So even though our dollar was being debased, the whole world had to buy oil in the petrodollar. That was a brilliant move. And in 1974, we created the COMEX. Because the only real antagonist to the US dollar was gold and silver. So we put the comics futures on the comex market. We did absolutely undeniable open price fixing, legalized price fixing on gold and silver and we got the petrodollar and then we inflated our debased dollar to the rest of the world because of the Honeywell reserve currency.

That worked. That was our, our currency, your problem, as John Connolly said in the 70s, that’s the exorbitant privilege of being the world reserve currency holder. And that worked for decades. What we’re seeing by 2025 and frankly by 2022 is that the world is no longer wanting to be again, the dog wagged by the tail of the US dollar and US policy. That exorbitant privilege that our currency, your problem attitude, that arrogance that worked for decades is slowly falling apart again. The evidence of that through de dollarization, through the gold of central banks now hold more gold than US Treasuries.

The movement away from the dollar again. We could spend hours on each of those themes, but the big picture is very simple. The joy we had, the temporary prosperity we enjoyed from 1971 at the expense of just about everybody else is now coming full circle back to a karmic reality the world simply doesn’t trust. Believe one of the most staggering elements of this entire rally is just how few in the financial world actually saw it coming. While silver rocketed toward 90 to Wall street sat paralyzed, either disbelieving or completely blind to the setup that had been forming for years, Pepenberg points out the sheer absurdity of it.

How institutional capital, supposedly the smartest money in the room, entered the silver market late, cautiously and with almost no conviction. Hedge funds were still betting on tech and Treasuries while the silver squeeze was unfolding right under their noses. US speculators, always quick to chase hype, missed the real story. Because silver wasn’t trending on social media and it wasn’t being pumped by Wall street talking heads. The rally largely bypassed the traditional channels. And by the time big money started to wake up, the train was already pulling out of the station. And this is where it gets even more ironic.

The very institutions that dismiss silver as irrelevant are now the ones chasing it in panic, trying to secure exposure at double the price they ignored just months ago. Pepenberg doesn’t see this as a fluke. He sees it as a warning. A market that was once dominated by insiders and manipulators is now being overtaken by real fundamentals driven demands. And that shift is leaving the old Guard, dazed and exposed. The longer they deny silver’s new role, the more violent the revaluation will be understood. And I don’t want to be flippant about that. It bothers me a lot that a lot of average citizens just can’t afford.

Whether it’s at a pullback or at all time high or just starting, it’s still just very expensive for them. I’m very sensitive to that. I think your question’s important. This collar, this manipulation, what happened to the silver market post 1980? What we just saw with the margin increases on silver on the buy in for the silver comics markets and attempt to push the price down in December, December 12th of this year. These are all concerns. They’re particularly true of silver, more so I think than gold in terms of the volatility and what happened to silver post 1980 in, in the years of just flatlining silver.

And so you know, if you’re trying to ride it up to 100 or 150 and then, and then you, you don’t find an exit window in silver and it goes back to 50 from where you started, that would be a very painful experience. And I’ve seen that, seen people do that when, when they’re trading silver and they’re afraid they’re missing out. This is a key issue that is more true of silver because it has industrial and monetary properties more so than gold. Gold is traditionally more stable and silver tends to rip in the gold bow market faster than gold and we saw that in 2025.

So it goes back to first of all, separating gold from silver because silver can be manipulated because of its market cap, far easier than gold. That doesn’t mean the COMEX and the LBMA banks haven’t done a heck of a good job in trying to fix gold and silver. It’s easier to play the silver game. And so for, for, for those looking at silver as the smart man’s silver as opposed to the poor man’s gold, there’s still more volatility. As Egon often says, it’s not for widows and orphans. That why when you’re looking at silver, you know you need to be looking at entries and exits, not as a trader.

But there is a point where silver can be far more volatile and can be far more difficult for uninitiated into this space. Silver is like any bull market. It will continue to rise in my opinion, not in a straight line, but it will shake out a lot of fellow travelers. It will scare away a lot of investors on the way up. So unless you have a, a price target, which I don’t like to say in dollars. I really think it’s in terms of gold silver compressions or gold silver ratios. You know, are you looking at is your gold silver ratio, Is your exit from silver going to be when you get to 50 or prior real compressions of 32? These are very personal decisions.

Gold is not the same type of store of value and safer asset to invest decades ahead in. Silver is not as safe to me as gold. That’s why we always recommend, and many of us in the precious metal space that when you’re looking at precious metals it’s more 80 to 75% gold and 25 to 20% silver silver. Because silver will upset your stomach more painfully than gold in a bull cycle. And by the way, in bull markets in both gold and silver, you can see major retracements midway through in gold markets from 71 to 80 when gold went from 35 to over 800, it had a real oh moment in 1975 midway through the bull market, it shook out a lot of traders or excuse me, a lot of investors.

The same thing happened in silver. But silver, you know, you saw, you talk about 1980 in 2011 and in 1980 the com trick where they raised the margin cost for the buy in on silver for the paper markets. Overnight if you didn’t meet those increased prices, you were basically shut out automatically. There was a massive seller, a sell off in silver by the speculators, the hedge funds and the shadow banks around the comments. The speculators were pushed out because if they didn’t meet those new margin hikes. Here’s where the rally starts to move from shocking to downright surreal.

Because silver is now operating in a price inelastic zone. What does that mean? It means demand no longer reacts to rising prices the way it used to. Manufacturers, industrial giants and tech firms aren’t pulling back, they’re bidding more. Because silver has become a non negotiable input in products that can’t function without it. And Pepenberg highlights this as the most misunderstood driver of the current explosion when silver is only a tiny fraction of a product’s cost. But it’s absolutely essential to that product’s utility. Buyers will pay whatever it takes to get it. Solar panel makers aren’t swapping silver for copper.

They can’t ev manufacturers aren’t scaling back production, they’re doubling down. The AI arms race is accelerating and every server, every motherboard, every high speed connector needs silver to function. This is what creates a perfect storm Rising prices don’t kill demand, they feed it. And with COMEX and LBMA inventories already running on fumes, the pressure is turning into a vertical lift price. Inelastic demand is what takes a rally and turns it into a runaway. This is no longer a commodity responding to investor sentiment. This is a metal caught in a relentless industrial vice grip. And the harder the grip gets, the more violently the price reacts.

$92 is just the consequence of that pressure, but it’s not the ceiling, not even close. So it’s not just the gold executives or the gold bugs, which we’ve been for decades, and I think we’ve been right for decades, that are admitting this. I think it’s very important for retail investors who want to see gold as a store of value, as a better strategic reserve asset for their own savings than a dollar that’s melting and being inflated away, that they realize that they shouldn’t be looking at gold and silver as a trade to time or worry about peak gold or peak silver.

I will never make a price target. I’ve never have and I never will. I’ve always said consistently, like Egon has for decades, that gold and silver will continue to rise in a meaningful direction north, because paper money will continue to be debased to pay for the debt sins of our mental middle budget monetary planners, whatever country you live in. And so that’s why the case for gold in 2025 is no different than it was, or 2026 will be no different than it was in 2025 or 2024, it’s outperformed the markets for the last 25 years. That’s just starting to be recognized now.

It’s not I told you so. This is common sense. It isn’t gold executive pushing a metal. What. What worries me is at some point, because gold has a very finite supply and an infinite duration, which is the exact opposite of which has an infinite supply and a finite direct duration. The simple fact is gold’s going to become more and more expensive for average investors to afford at any meaningful level. And that’s what bothers me. And that’s why if you’re going to own gold for more than a trade or more than an exit and entry point, if you’re going to think of it as a better store of value for your family and for a legacy investment, looking at the price and comparing it to 2024 or projecting a 2026 is not nearly as important as looking at why you need to have gold.

Gold doesn’t have to be in my in my company or in my vault. Or in our vault, I should say. But you need to understand that your paper currencies are being debased. They call the debasement trade. That’s a euphemism. It’s theft. It’s open theft. You’re paying actual taxes, but you’re suffering the invisible tax of the debased dollar. I’m just worried that too many people are worrying about whether to get in or what price or waiting for a pullback. But a pullback from what? From $5,000 gold. From $4,500 gold. From 3,800 dol. Thinking longer term, you’re just getting the gold because it’s going to be a heck of a lot more expensive many years from now than it is today.

If you’re looking to trade, best of luck. I don’t know many people who trade it well. Silver’s breakout isn’t just about scarcity or speculation. It’s about survival. Pepenberg draws a sharp line here. Silver has transformed from an inflation hedge into an economic lifeline. As fiat currencies wobble under the weight of debt, debt deficits and decaying trust, silver is emerging as a bridge between the old financial order and the real, tangible economy of the future. It’s not just a store of value, it’s the hardware inside that future. Every nation racing toward energy independence needs it. Every tech firm building the next phase of infrastructure relies on it.

And every investor losing faith in the illusion of endless credit and central bank control is now seeking protection in metals that do something that hold real world utility and monetary credibility. This dual identity is what makes silver so unique. Gold may be the classic haven, but silver has a foot in both worlds. It’s the metal that powers your home and preserves your wealth. That’s what Pepenberg says. Most people still don’t grasp. They’re waiting for a signal, a headline, a moment of validation from the financial elite. But the moment is already here. The money is already rotating.

The shift is already happening. And silver, with one foot in the physical economy and the other in the financial reset, is leading that shift. It’s not chasing relevance. It’s becoming the new standard that just debases the currency even more. It shows less and less respect for the $$ because let’s be honest, the only one buying our Treasuries is going to be our Fed. And the only way the Fed can pay for that isn’t tax receipts and gdp. It’s a mouse clicker. That sounds so absurd and so ridiculous, but that’s in a simple way, we’re drinking our own rotten Kool Aid with a money printer.

That’s not a sustainable solution. And a lot of the short term debt that was issued, almost 70% of the debt or IOUs issued in 2025 was on the short end of the year yield curve. I mean short duration, less than two years, that has to be paid back and the interest has to be paid back soon. It’s an unsustainable policy. That means the Fed’s temporary qe, which they announced in December of this year, is just as bogus as the Fed’s transitory inflation mean back in 2022. It’s going to be structural QE, not temporary QE. We’ve seen in the repo markets, we’ve seen it at the central bank levels.

They’re going to have to produce more liquidity. That is fake money out of thin air to sustain the bond market. I know the bond market sounds boring. The US treasury market sounds boring. I’m simplifying a lot. But the bottom line is we have to buy our own debt and we have to do it by creating money out of thin air. That’s an inherently inflationary policy. That doesn’t mean we won’t have deflationary forces like a recession, which I think we’ve been in since 2022, or gosh forbid, a market mean reversion. But I think the market’s almost too big to fail.

So I think the Fed will print more money, probably issue yield curve controls. The Fed’s balance sheet will increase by at least 500 billion this year. The dollar should get weaker. There’s a debate about that and there’s good debate to have about it. It’s a longer conversation. But gold will always be, that will always be a tailwind for precious metals because it is simply a better store of value than this melting ice cube printed dollars to sustain our bond market market. And that’s why I still see a very strong year ahead for gold. That doesn’t mean there won’t be pullbacks.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be manipulation of silver on, on the exchanges. And we’ve seen samples of that already. As we end the year, of course there’s going to be manipulation. Of course gold and silver still terrify countries like the U.S. but the evidence of the preference for gold isn’t coming from an executive who sells gold and stores in the hole in the ground in Switzerland, and it’s coming from the whole world. Jeffrey Gunlak’s pushing 25% gold. Morgan Stanley is pushing 20% gold as allocations. Central banks have been stacking over a thousand tons a year since we weaponized the dollar in 2022.

In other words, it’s not just the gold camp anymore that sees this. And there’s a reason why central banks hold more gold than U.S. bonds or U.S. treasury. Now we’re entering truly uncharted territory because the forecasts that once seemed outrageous are now being taken seriously. Ross Norman’s 2026 projection put Silver’s average at $122 and a potential high of $165. And just a year ago that would have been laughed off as clickbait. Today it’s looking conservative. Pipenberg argues this is exactly what happens in a commodity supercycle. The initial spike is dismissed as irrational until it keeps going.

And suddenly the so called experts start moving their targets after the price already broke the them. We’ve seen this before. In 1980, Silver’s price didn’t stop when it doubled. It kept running until it had risen nearly 900% in under a year. In 2011, silver tripled in less than 24 months before hitting a wall. But this time, Pepenberg says, is different. This time it’s not just investor driven, it’s structurally supported. You have a collapsing paper currency system, record industrial demand, chronic underinvestment in new supply, and now government recognition of silver as a strategic asset. It’s a perfect storm.

And with mainstream voices finally catching up to what independent analysts have been screaming for years, the $92 breakout is no longer the climax. It’s the setup. The ceiling isn’t $100, it’s whatever the market decides when the panic buying begins. And no one wants to see sell. As Warren Buffett said, that’s not talent, that’s deception. But CEOs in the C suites of these companies buy back their stocks for obvious reasons. They get paid on the share price. If they artificially push up their share price by buying their own stocks, that brings the earnings per share numbers down, it brings the share prices up, and they effectively vote themselves a raise.

That worked in 2025 to keep the stock market, which was 80% AI driven anyway. Way to keep a lot of these other floundering stocks from tanking. What rising rates mean in a bond market that’s unloved and untrusted, like our US treasury market, is what rising rates can mean is that even those stock buybacks will become too expensive. I mean, Google and Apple were the big leaders this year in the stock buyback game. The other thing that raising rates do is it makes real estate more expensive, makes everything more expensive. And the irony is, even as rates were rising this year and as yields were rising, the DXY continues to go down, down.

Usually that means a stronger dollar and so far we haven’t seen that. Again, it’s another debate. But to your question, rising yields are bad for just about everything, and they’re certainly going to be bad for the stock market. Even the stock buyback facade that made this market look healthier than it is gets harder with a rising rate environment. That’s why I see bazooka money inevitably coming out to buy those bonds and bring those yields down and bring those rates down. So you’re going to see more inflationary pressure, more inflationary signals, but fighting against that inflation from the Fed and QE to keep those yields down and to buy those unloved bonds, that’s inflationary.

But what the man on the street is feeling, what labor data is feeling, what their currency is telling them is they’re getting poor. So you have a recession on Main street, which is a deflationary force, which actually takes some of the bite off the inflation data, only because the man on the street is getting kneecaps. So maybe it’s almost a matter of Fed policy that we can fight inflation by, by gutting it to the middle class, by sucker punching the middle class. With recessionary deflation, a mean reversion in the market, a major sell off in the market would also be deflationary.

I just think that right now the markets can continue to rise on these frothy tops until rates get too high. If, if yields get too high. To your question, back to the bond market. Even this completely disingenuous rigged to fail stock market will suffer. And again, stock buybacks kept it up this year to a meaningful level. I think another thing that people don’t realize on the stock market though is in addition to these stock buybacks, 2024 and 2025 saw record high insider selling of their own stocks. So it’s an amazingly rigged game. And I’m a trader, I come from Wall Street.

I’ve seen this movie before. But prior to the Lehman blow up in 2008, companies like Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers themselves, Countrywide Mortgages, they were dumping hundreds of billions of their stocks before the crash. That was the rats leaving the ship. That’s in the past. But just in 2024, we saw 464 billion in sell offs of insiders selling their own stocks, including Jamie Dimon, who sold 150 million of his own banking stocks that year. It wasn’t for philanthropy, retirement planning. It was because they saw the risk of. And so Bezos sold 13 billion in 24 and in 25 Nvidia.

A lot of the insiders were selling their shares. So at the same time they’re dumping and taking profits, they’re also buying back their shares to lift up their share price. It’s an entirely rigged game. It’s. I’m not making these numbers up. 464 billion was 2024, I think in 07, just before the markets crashed. In 08, the number was 650 billion. But that as silver explodes into triple digits, the battlefield is already dividing winners from losers. And Pepenberg makes it clear this isn’t a rising tide lifting all boats, it’s a tidal wave. And only the most strategically positioned are riding the crest.

Take Pan American Silver, for example. After securing a greater stake in the ultra high grade Juanacipio project, they’ve set themselves up to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of this silver supercycle cycle. Their 2026 guidance blew past 25 million ounces, giving investors one of the purest plays on this historic price surge. On the flip side, companies like Freeport McMoRan, despite their exposure to booming copper markets, are getting crushed by production setbacks. The mudslide at Grasberg has slashed their 2026 outlook by 35%, proving that even with the right metal, the wrong operational timing can be catastrophic. But it’s not just about miners, it’s about entire portfolios.

Funds heavy in paper assets are being outpaced by physical metal holders. Investors who saw silver as dead money are now watching it breathe new life into the hardest hit sectors of their accounts. And those still waiting for a diploma, they’re learning the hard way that in a true supply shock, dips don’t come, they vanish. Pepenberg sees this moment as a decisive filter separating the prepared from the exposed, the realists from the dreamers. And with silver rewriting the rules of engagement, the gap between winners and losers is growing by the day. Overnight, usually on a Friday before the weekend at 2am if they didn’t increase their buy in, they were shut out.

They were sold out. That happened this December. Didn’t push the price down because silver, unlike 1980 or 2011, has so much more physical industrial demand now than it did then. And I think every time that the COMEX tries to play a trick and push the silver price down and push the sell offs and the speculators the industrial buyers, the Teslas and the Volkswagens of the world, or the nuclear power plants of the world, or the solar panel manufacturers of the world, they don’t see that sell off the signals or rings into panic. They see it as an opportunity to buy at a discount.

That’s what’s separating silver this year from prior manipulations. But that does not mean that silver can’t be manipulated in the future. What’s different? I think also about not to say that silver is perfectly safe from manipulation, but the COMEX free float and the LBMA free float of available silver just isn’t what it used to be. See in prior cycles you’re seeing net exportations out of these exchanges and I think that’s what’s critical is the silver in particular just isn’t there to manipulate like it was in prior cycles. That doesn’t mean that the LBMA banks and the comics won’t continue to try and play this game.

I just think they’re getting less effective. So there will be long answer, short question, more volatility in silver than in gold. But the supply and demand dynamics of both gold and silver are undeniable. If you’re playing the long game, especially for gold, I’m not going to price target, it will be meaningfully higher 10 years from now than it is today. Don’t worry about the pullback. If you’re thinking a 10 year out to save in precious metals and spend in fiat, silver will be more volatile. And I think again you have to look at prior price moves, inflation adjusted price moves.

What’s your target for silver? Silver because it’s not the same. I think store of value holding safety valve that gold is. And again, you know, I think we saw a supply problem this year in the silver market. Literally the silver market seized up in October. I mean literally they had no ounces available. And that to me shows a major mismatch in supply and demand. And so I think silver has farther to run and the manipulations will come. It will and probably shake out a few, many investors because if they’re looking at it as a trade they’re going to be spooked out.

But if you bought gold, excuse me, if you bought silver at 50 or 40, what’s a good enough exit for you? Is it 100, is it 150? Is it 200? That’s a personal choice. You can look at compressions, gold silver ratios, you can look at inflation adjusted highs and pick your target. What I don’t want you to do is buy silver at 40. Watch it go to 150, 200, whatever it is, and then come back down to 50 and go through that whole night here without taking some profits because silver is more volatile. Gold is a different, different answer to that question.

Because gold, yes, we’ll have retracements as we saw in prior bull markets. But if you’re holding it as a store of value, as a preservation asset, as an allocation to protect you from melting fiat money, you’re going to be, you’re going to be confident through pullbacks and spikes up in gold without the same fears you might have in the silver market. I hope that answers the question. Silver is very different than gold. Peepenberg’s final message is as clear as it is urgent. $92 isn’t the peak, it’s act. The real silver breakout hasn’t even begun. What we’re witnessing is the early phase of a historic revaluation where silver shakes off decades of suppression and finally trades at its true value, not based on hype, but on utility scarcity and monetary desperation.

This isn’t about catching a trend. It’s about waking up to a paradigm shift. Silver has gone from being ignored to being misunderstood to becoming the most strategically important metal of this decade. And according to Pepenberg, those still on the sidelines are running out of time. The system that kept silver undervalued is breaking apart. And when that dam fully collapses, there will be no orderly entry, only chaos, panic, and vertical moves. So if you’ve been waiting for confirmation, for proof, for someone to tell you it’s real, this is it. $92 silver is no longer a theory. It’s a flashing red, red siren warning that everything is changing.

If you want to stay ahead of the curve, make sure to subscribe to the channel. We’ll be breaking down every phase of this unfolding story as it happens. And remember, this is not financial advice. Always speak to a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.
[tr:tra].

See more of Silver News Daily on their Public Channel and the MPN Silver News Daily channel.