Silver is no longer just creeping higher—it's surging, and the market is being forced to reckon with a metal that has quietly moved from monetary afterthought to industrial linchpin.That was the framing that emerged as InvestorNews.com host Tracy Hughes sat down with Peter Clausi, Director and VP of Capital Markets at Silver Bullet Mines Corp. (TSXV: SBMI | OTCQB: SBMCF, as silver prices smashed through levels few analysts were prepared to model, let alone defend. When Hughes reminded Clausi of a conversation at PDAC the year before—when silver was trading at US$26–27 per ounce—his reaction was blunt. “You asked me where I saw silver ending 2025,” Clausi recalled. “I gave you a prediction of between $35 and $40 based on infrastructure issues, demand issues, and optimism. Well, it appears my estimate for 2025 was off, and boy has it skyrocketed. Today, it briefly cleared $115. I think I saw it at $123. Trading back down around $110 an ounce, which is just incredible.”The obvious question followed: had investors already missed the move. Clausi’s answer was characteristically cautious in form, but emphatic in substance. “I’m not a securities advisor, so do your own due diligence,” he said, before adding, “in my opinion, given the structural issues and the demand side, silver’s just getting started.” What once looked like a long, steady climb now appears compressed. “I had seen a long climb up where it’s making it to the 200 to 250 range over a five-year period. We might get there a lot sooner than that, but silver’s just getting going.”Unlike gold, whose rally is often explained through macro anxiety and monetary debasement, silver is being pulled by a web of physical constraints. Clausi dismissed the old shorthand that silver merely shadows gold. “For a long time, silver was the poor man’s gold,” he said. “Some people still talk about that wacky thing called the gold-silver ratio, which makes no sense to me.” Gold, he noted, had now cleared US$5,000 an ounce on its own merits, while silver was contending with pressures that had little to do with safe-haven psychology. “Silver is very much an industrial mineral and it’s very much in demand. It’ll be very hard to affect the green revolution without silver.”That demand is not abstract. Clausi walked through the metal’s ubiquity with the ease of someone who has repeated the argument often, yet still sounds faintly surprised by it. “You can’t have effective solar panels without silver,” he said. “There’s silver in the mirror you shave in, silver in your laptop circuit boards, silver in lights, silver in watches.” Roughly 700 million ounces a year are consumed by industrial applications alone, he noted—“not plates, not teacups, not jewelry”—and for several consecutive years, demand has exceeded mine supply. Recycling contributes only about 10% of annual production. “We’re still in a deficit position,” Clausi said. “And for any fan of capitalism, you know what happens. If demand exceeds supply, price goes up. So, welcome to $100 silver.”Policy decisions have added friction to an already tight market. Hughes pointed to China’s export restrictions and the U.S. decision to add silver to its critical minerals list. Clausi was skeptical of the latter, even as he acknowledged its market impact. China’s controls, he said, amount to a de facto embargo: only 44 Chinese companies are permitted to export silver, each requiring state approval. “That’s just layers of bureaucracy which will slow the international movement of silver.” As for the U.S. Geological Survey’s move, Clausi was unsparing. “They’re now 60 minerals out of 118 on my periodic table that they’ve deemed critical. And if everything’s critical, nothing is critical.” Silver is abundant in the United States, he argued, and the rationale offered felt circular. Still, he conceded, “those two items are adding to the demand side for silver.”
