Pre-covid, I religiously saved silver (and gold). Just bought some every single paycheck for like 6 years. I had coins, jewelry, bars, silverware, etc.
I wished my parents had left me a treasure, but they didn't, so I thought I'd do that for my kids, maybe even leave them a map... But I don't have kids, so after being locked in my house during covid, I kind of went a bit crazy.
I sold it all and moved states (after travelling quite a bit). My collection was quite massive, and I 100% knew that this day would come, but I didn't care, I just needed a new view. I live near the beach now, but... if I just held, I'd be in a much better place. I hate myself a bit for selling.
At least you didn’t buy bitcoin at $200 and sell at $400 thinking you made out like a bandit, like me. (I basically never think about this though, and it shouldn’t hurt your soul.)
Your upset because you used hard earned money to completely change your life to the point that you now live near the beach? Buddy, that is exactly what money is for and it appears you used it more wisely than 99% of everyone else. Congrats on making the leap to better your situation and have experiences that will never be replaced. Enjoy your life! Looks like you are doing that so continue doing it! This is what it is all for!
If you sold it and bought housing 4+ years ago when interest rates were near zero you've still got the last laugh.
People holding dollars instead of PMs or real estate are the real bag holders. Not only are they actively paying for those fed generated artificial interest rate negative real rate mortgages that property owners got (paid for via inflation on non property owners), they missed out on massive appreciation of property and PMs. They are literally paying the richest people to become even richer, and paying them for the privilege to get further and further away from ever owning their own home.
If you sold in 2023 or 2024 though, you basically got fucked both ways.
There's an asian AI guy on youtube providing a lot of information about what is going on with the silver right now. Sometimes it seems like he has some insider information, and the whole reasoning seems to come from an expert.
It's strange because it's just not one channel but multiple, and the person behind has kept uploading videos during the entire duration of these holidays. So far, he seems to be quite accurate with his predictions. It's been quite informative.
That video is an interesting switch-up from the past 'JP Morgan the silver suppressor' thing that everyone was going with. Now that silver is going up a new uniting belief is required for the silver stackers. Reminds me of the 'Game Stop stock will literally make everyone with a single share a millionaire' strat that had retail investors clamouring to get as much as much as they could and to hold it to the grave no matter how much it dropped. Just two more weeks bro. I think these sorts of videos prey on people without the sophistication to understand financial markets or assets. Everything the AI guy is saying could be 100% true but how would you know? Everything about Gamestop stock was a lie but it had the same sort of ring to it.
I guess eventually people develop enough discernment to say they don't know whats going on, until then slop like this is taken as Gospel.
OP did call him AI. If the underlying research is valid rather than AI generated it can still be valuable. Seems like this guy is using an AI persona essentially to communicate his ideas.
To me, AI Asian guy sounds like an AI generated person that is Asian. Asian AI guy sounds like you could be talking about Andrew Ng or some one else that teaches about ML, LLMs, etc.
How is it infinite? Oil forms from ancient organic matter under intense heat and pressure, a process taking millions of years, making it non-renewable on human timescales.
Sarcasm? 150-200M oz of silver are recycled annually[1]. Oil obviously is mostly burned and won't be recoverable, and clearly finite (even if we managed to squeeze out more with fracking etc.)
Annually, we consume more oil than we find additional reserves of. The difference is something like 12 times less than annual consumption, and the gap is widening.
If you’ve found a way to escape that arithmetic, I’m all ears.
The math is pretty simple: the world consumes 36 billion barrels of oil a year and there are like 2 trillion barrels of known reserves. We have enough reserves for 55 years of current consumption. There’s 0 incentive to find more.
Ostensibly not all known oil fields are actively being extracted. This fact alone makes it unlikely that discovering a new source would affect the price of oil, unless it can be retrieved using cheaper than the existing methods. It’s also worth pointing out that “oil” as a resource isn’t this homogenous substance. Basically every different source of oil has a different (and expensive) refinement process on the other end. It’s a lot more variables than the Reddit-style armchair oil tycoon would probably expect.
Not sure which western countries you’re referring to but the US has pretty giant subsidies on oil.[0][1] Of course it’s also taxed but the pro source shows that most of the subsidies are tax reductions.
> However this doesn't reduce consumption, it just shifts the consumption to the developing world
This is true if production levels aren't responsive to prices, but I see no reason that would be the case. Petroleum production levels are known to be quite responsive to upward price movements.
I too wish we were weaving exotic matter metamaterials out of the aether, but until then hydrocarbons are a miracle from the heavens for their uses. A modern cedar tree.
The sun is but a poor, corrupted pun on starlight. The reflecting pool of crude shimmers with thin-film interference like nebulae on the celestial expanse.
You could argue that the sun was pretty useful, quite the “essential companion” in the Stone Age as well.
In fact, it is hard to imagine there would have been enough dead trees to make oil if it were not for the sun.
You could argue (pretty soundly) that oil is just a way of consuming the energy in trees which got that energy from the sun. So oil is just a way of extracting ancient solar energy.
Oil’s potential, left deep in the crust, remains latent. Every mote of sunlight, furiously brought to life by the maelstrom, seeks inexorably for immediate purpose.
They will when supplies eventually dwindle. We were saved from peak oil only by the invention/cheapening of fracking followed by the advent of horizontal drilling and unlocking of oil in shales. It's unlikely any such windfall will occur again, and even if it does that merely kicks the can down the road.
All petroleum was created from ancient forests before the evolution of microorganisms that could decompose fiber, so the plant material was simply buried and gradually became petroleum. Above ground, evolution produced organisms which could break down fiber. My point being, that not only is petroleum very useful, it is exceptionally rare on a geological timeline (at least on this planet ). It's like a cosmic trust fund, and like most trust fund recipents, we utterly squandered it. We took all this free energy, burned it to power ai slop, and poisoned ourselves in the process. We should have been using that oil to push humans out of the gravity well to Titan where petroleum is abundant. But no, we wanted big cars, cheap electricity and single use utensils.
Edit: I was mistaken, confusing coal and petroleum. While petroleum comes from microscopic ocean life, coal forms from the remains of terrestrial plants.
My point is that the chemical complexity (manufacturing uses) can be reproduced, and the energy storage density also can be. So really the gift of hydrocarbons under the ground is more that readily available energy is under our feet to help propel us towards higher levels sources of energy. IMO it’s a stepping stone and that’s effectively how humanity is using it.
I wouldn't even know where to sell (or buy) a barrel of oil. It's one of the most traded assets yet if someone handed me a barrel, I'd have no idea what to do with it.
This absolutely hurts my soul.
Pre-covid, I religiously saved silver (and gold). Just bought some every single paycheck for like 6 years. I had coins, jewelry, bars, silverware, etc.
I wished my parents had left me a treasure, but they didn't, so I thought I'd do that for my kids, maybe even leave them a map... But I don't have kids, so after being locked in my house during covid, I kind of went a bit crazy.
I sold it all and moved states (after travelling quite a bit). My collection was quite massive, and I 100% knew that this day would come, but I didn't care, I just needed a new view. I live near the beach now, but... if I just held, I'd be in a much better place. I hate myself a bit for selling.
At least you didn’t buy bitcoin at $200 and sell at $400 thinking you made out like a bandit, like me. (I basically never think about this though, and it shouldn’t hurt your soul.)
Your upset because you used hard earned money to completely change your life to the point that you now live near the beach? Buddy, that is exactly what money is for and it appears you used it more wisely than 99% of everyone else. Congrats on making the leap to better your situation and have experiences that will never be replaced. Enjoy your life! Looks like you are doing that so continue doing it! This is what it is all for!
You have to try to not think like that. I know because I’ve been in similar places with investments. Just try to focus on gratitude.
You're right. What's done is done, and there's no going back now.
If you sold it and bought housing 4+ years ago when interest rates were near zero you've still got the last laugh.
People holding dollars instead of PMs or real estate are the real bag holders. Not only are they actively paying for those fed generated artificial interest rate negative real rate mortgages that property owners got (paid for via inflation on non property owners), they missed out on massive appreciation of property and PMs. They are literally paying the richest people to become even richer, and paying them for the privilege to get further and further away from ever owning their own home.
If you sold in 2023 or 2024 though, you basically got fucked both ways.
PM?
Precious Metals
precious metals?
There's an asian AI guy on youtube providing a lot of information about what is going on with the silver right now. Sometimes it seems like he has some insider information, and the whole reasoning seems to come from an expert.
It's strange because it's just not one channel but multiple, and the person behind has kept uploading videos during the entire duration of these holidays. So far, he seems to be quite accurate with his predictions. It's been quite informative.
If someone is curious, one of many: https://youtu.be/vBIUZGlNkks
Today's video on the 1934 Silver Purchase Act is fascinating
https://x.com/echodatruth/status/2004802236224766009
That video is an interesting switch-up from the past 'JP Morgan the silver suppressor' thing that everyone was going with. Now that silver is going up a new uniting belief is required for the silver stackers. Reminds me of the 'Game Stop stock will literally make everyone with a single share a millionaire' strat that had retail investors clamouring to get as much as much as they could and to hold it to the grave no matter how much it dropped. Just two more weeks bro. I think these sorts of videos prey on people without the sophistication to understand financial markets or assets. Everything the AI guy is saying could be 100% true but how would you know? Everything about Gamestop stock was a lie but it had the same sort of ring to it.
I guess eventually people develop enough discernment to say they don't know whats going on, until then slop like this is taken as Gospel.
Do you not realize this is an AI generated person?
He realized it. But you did not realize that.
OP did call him AI. If the underlying research is valid rather than AI generated it can still be valuable. Seems like this guy is using an AI persona essentially to communicate his ideas.
To me, AI Asian guy sounds like an AI generated person that is Asian. Asian AI guy sounds like you could be talking about Andrew Ng or some one else that teaches about ML, LLMs, etc.
What? Did you even read the first sentence he wrote?
Silver is limited in supply. The production is actually in deficit for years now, as silver gets used up and there is very little recycling.
Oil on the other hand is infinite.
Funny, I like it. I guess gold has been too expensive for a while.
Erm, actually once we have subatomic assemblers then silver will also be infinite.
How is it infinite? Oil forms from ancient organic matter under intense heat and pressure, a process taking millions of years, making it non-renewable on human timescales.
Anyone with basic physical literacy knows nothing extractive is infinite.
What interest is served by posting this obviously wrong rhetoric?
Sarcasm? 150-200M oz of silver are recycled annually[1]. Oil obviously is mostly burned and won't be recoverable, and clearly finite (even if we managed to squeeze out more with fracking etc.)
1: https://www.physicalgold.com/insights/how-much-silver-is-rec...
You must have had a lot of fun when the "peak oil" crowd was dominating the conversation.
Annually, we consume more oil than we find additional reserves of. The difference is something like 12 times less than annual consumption, and the gap is widening.
If you’ve found a way to escape that arithmetic, I’m all ears.
The math is pretty simple: the world consumes 36 billion barrels of oil a year and there are like 2 trillion barrels of known reserves. We have enough reserves for 55 years of current consumption. There’s 0 incentive to find more.
There's a $60+ / barrel incentive to find and extract more.
Ostensibly not all known oil fields are actively being extracted. This fact alone makes it unlikely that discovering a new source would affect the price of oil, unless it can be retrieved using cheaper than the existing methods. It’s also worth pointing out that “oil” as a resource isn’t this homogenous substance. Basically every different source of oil has a different (and expensive) refinement process on the other end. It’s a lot more variables than the Reddit-style armchair oil tycoon would probably expect.
The human verification script used on this site caused my phone's speakers to wig out.
This is the inevitable result of western countries taxing oil.
The higher the taxes the lower the price of crude has to be for people to afford it. This means reduced western demand at high prices.
However this doesn't reduce consumption, it just shifts the consumption to the developing world, where there are minimal if any taxes on consumption.
Not sure which western countries you’re referring to but the US has pretty giant subsidies on oil.[0][1] Of course it’s also taxed but the pro source shows that most of the subsidies are tax reductions.
0: pro fossil fuels: https://energyanalytics.org/u-s-fossil-fuel-subsidies/
1: anti fossil fuels: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/republican-spending-bill-fossil...
> However this doesn't reduce consumption, it just shifts the consumption to the developing world
This is true if production levels aren't responsive to prices, but I see no reason that would be the case. Petroleum production levels are known to be quite responsive to upward price movements.
Meanwhile in most states there is no sales tax at all on silver bullion.
If only this wasn't wholly predictable...
It's actually sad that a barrel of oil is still worth anything, but hey, what to do.
I too wish we were weaving exotic matter metamaterials out of the aether, but until then hydrocarbons are a miracle from the heavens for their uses. A modern cedar tree.
I feel they’re more a miracle from the depths of hell. Sunlight is probably the miracle from heaven.
Petroleum is a stable sunlight storage medium.
The sun is but a poor, corrupted pun on starlight. The reflecting pool of crude shimmers with thin-film interference like nebulae on the celestial expanse.
You could argue that the sun was pretty useful, quite the “essential companion” in the Stone Age as well.
In fact, it is hard to imagine there would have been enough dead trees to make oil if it were not for the sun.
You could argue (pretty soundly) that oil is just a way of consuming the energy in trees which got that energy from the sun. So oil is just a way of extracting ancient solar energy.
Oil’s potential, left deep in the crust, remains latent. Every mote of sunlight, furiously brought to life by the maelstrom, seeks inexorably for immediate purpose.
It is useful as chemical feedstock, burning it is a waste.
Truly, it’s a miracle for manufacturing. I wish people would understand what a profound waste burning it actually is.
They will when supplies eventually dwindle. We were saved from peak oil only by the invention/cheapening of fracking followed by the advent of horizontal drilling and unlocking of oil in shales. It's unlikely any such windfall will occur again, and even if it does that merely kicks the can down the road.
All petroleum was created from ancient forests before the evolution of microorganisms that could decompose fiber, so the plant material was simply buried and gradually became petroleum. Above ground, evolution produced organisms which could break down fiber. My point being, that not only is petroleum very useful, it is exceptionally rare on a geological timeline (at least on this planet ). It's like a cosmic trust fund, and like most trust fund recipents, we utterly squandered it. We took all this free energy, burned it to power ai slop, and poisoned ourselves in the process. We should have been using that oil to push humans out of the gravity well to Titan where petroleum is abundant. But no, we wanted big cars, cheap electricity and single use utensils.
Edit: I was mistaken, confusing coal and petroleum. While petroleum comes from microscopic ocean life, coal forms from the remains of terrestrial plants.
Hydrocarbons can be synthesized.
edit: let me elaborate.
My point is that the chemical complexity (manufacturing uses) can be reproduced, and the energy storage density also can be. So really the gift of hydrocarbons under the ground is more that readily available energy is under our feet to help propel us towards higher levels sources of energy. IMO it’s a stepping stone and that’s effectively how humanity is using it.
I think that the forest thing might be true for coal but I believe oil is from algae.
You are right! Thank you for correcting me
This (amazing) hypothesis has been challenged by new evidence; see for example https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4780611/.
I read this "useful as automotive feedstock" which still makes sense.
I wouldn't even know where to sell (or buy) a barrel of oil. It's one of the most traded assets yet if someone handed me a barrel, I'd have no idea what to do with it.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-03/that-time...
The price should actually trend up as supply is choked by pollution taxes.
Every voter who votes for lower gas prices is agreeing that it's better to live inside the cruel empire than to build a world without empire
i didn't know gas prices were decided by vote.
time to sell the silverware
I know, right? Stainless steel is objectively better. Send the silver on to some valuable use, like making PV cells.
How about Microsoft Silverlight
https://opensilver.net/
Discussion (21 points, 23 hours ago, 23 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46396755
no paywall: https://www.wsj.com/finance/commodities-futures/an-ounce-of-...
Visible without JavaScript etc.: https://archive.ph/qUe7n (it was already there when I checked).