Since Liberation Day in April 2025, Silver has been on an uncharacteristic winning streak. A forgotten asset, barely teetering above $30 dollars per ounce for the past 5 years, liberation day caused a ruckus in this trend, and saw its price accelerating – even screaming past 120 dollars per ounce in the last few days of January. Now it’s just teetering above $70.
Not just this, gold is down too. Gold reached over $5,500 dollars per ounce on the 29th January, this shift has caused gold to shave off $500 dollars per ounce, off its price. The other precious metals, palladium and platinum also saw a price dip, but less volatile than gold and silver
Two words to answer for this predicament – Kevin Warsh.
The nomination of Kevin Warsh is very interesting. Warsh has a long and storied past with being a hawk on the balance sheet. He’s been vocal about wanting to bring the balance sheet down, as a form of passive tightening that can offset some loosening of monetary policy.
Back to the markets, they have, up until Warsh’s new job announcement, been betting on easy money, expecting the Fed to cut rates. Kevin Warsh has changed this sentiment overnight. Warsh is a known monetary hawk – he prioritises controlling inflation over promoting short-term economic growth or employment and is worried about the economy overheating. This gives some explanation for why gold has dropped, hawkish comments are seen as deadly for gold. So, a new Fed chair election who is adamant on this, can give clarity on why this drop has occurred.
Silver has seen the biggest drop, and since last week, the largest struggle out of the four precious metals to rebound even slightly. Here is where this is interesting – while the markets, and investors are spiralling, and speculators who just bet on silver, because of its trend are now emptying out. Other global players are quietly using this dip to their advantage under the market’s nose.
These are China and Samsung.
China has enacted strict silver export restrictions on January 1, 2026. Changing silver exports to be license based; now only 44, state affiliated companies are even allowed to export the metal. This is on top of China’s 0.1% threshold law they brought in in late 2025, whereby foreign produced items made in China that contain 0.1% of Chinese controlled finite earth materials are subject to stringent export controls. These policies are in aim to grow domestic hordes of silver.
Why is this important. Silver has always been thought of as gold’s inferior alterative, this could be due to golds historical position during the gold standard system i.e. ‘as good as gold’. Silver has a unique combination of properties, it has the highest electrical and thermal conductivity of any element, a crucial element for solar power photovoltaic cells. It’s even hypoallergenic and used widely in medicine, and in cloud seeding, controlling forest fires and the weather.
Why it’s special, and this buy-and-hold belief is primarly driven by the energy transition – crucially batteries and EVs. Connecting this back to the aforementioned key player of Samsung and how they come into this. Samsung has made a breakthrough with an all-solid-state EV battery. The performance of the battery is revolutionary to the EV market, it could charge a full battery in 9 minutes to last 600 miles, surpassing lithium-ion battery capabilities. This battery would be made of a silver-carbon for the anode and a nickel-manganese-cobalt cathode. The silver composition of all solid-state batteries would need 1kg for per battery per EV, whereas the average battery right now for EV’s only needs about 25 grams. Since only 25,000 metric tons were mined in 2024 approx., and 22 million units of EV cars were built in 2025, with this figure set to be similar for 2026. The maths doesn’t add up here how silver will keep up with this demand.
As Morning Star reported, ‘China controls 70% of the silver that Big Tech, AI and solar power desperately need’. This means that if in the foreseen future, industrial demand picks up, China will control this market supply, if they keep building hoards which they are already attempting – thus, driving the price up.
The risks are whether the demand will maintain on the industrial manufacturing side. Projections are for the mass production of these all-solid-state batteries by Samsung is set to begin in 2027. Additionally, on a consumer level, whether the EV car market will sustain. Reuters published, that despite global EV registrations growing last year by 20%, this demand could lose pace, plus Q4 2025 EV were sales were observed to have decreased. Government policies could influence this situation as well. The UK has softened its Zero Emission mandate and hybrid allowance, whilst too manufacturers such as Aston Martin and McLaren have been made exempt from these mandate targets.
Nonetheless, the conviction expressed here still maintains, silver has shown how strong it can go now, breaking its former records. The main qualm for a buy-and-hold comes from volatility spikes, rather than if a substantial price hike could happen again.
Disclaimer: not financial advice.
Market Mindset 
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