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Blockbuster: Renewables, EVs need silver but China bans silver exports, and the price takes off

By Jo Nova

History books will be written about this week. “This is not good” says Elon Musk.

This week the world woke up to realize that silver is a critical mineral for the high tech, AI, solar panels, and renewables. In four days time, China, which supplies more than half of the processed silver on Earth, effectively blocks their exports of silver.

Meanwhile it turns out JP Morgan, which has been aggressively shorting the silver market for 15 years — was accumulating it all along. The entire COMEX silver market in New York has 30 million ounces of silver that is ‘immediately deliverable’. But JP Morgan is widely reported to control or custody up to ~700–800 million ounces of silver across vaulting, ETFs and proprietary holdings. It is de facto, the US strategic reserve, but controlled by a private bank, not by the Treasury.

The phase change is in progress. I’m not trying to cover all the details, just to let people know that something very big is unfolding.

Kitco Silver Price

The largest single use of silver has become “industrial applications”:

Silver, it turns out, is the best electrical and thermal conductor of all the […]