Future of silver as an investment/hedge

[matrawr]

So I was just wondering will physical or non physical silver come out on top in terms of demand? Granted someone somewhere will need the physical for industrial usage but would like to know what everyone's thoughtson that 

[Mark10110]

1 minute ago, matrawr said:

So I was just wondering will physical or non physical silver come out on top in terms of demand? Granted someone somewhere will need the physical for industrial usage but would like to know what everyone's thoughtson that 

physical or non physical, if you don't hold it you don't own it.

no one knows 100% what will go up and what will go down but silver/gold are pretty safe to sustain value. Everything else is just theories  

[matrawr]

6 minutes ago, Mark10110 said:

physical or non physical, if you don't hold it you don't own it.

no one knows 100% what will go up and what will go down but silver/gold are pretty safe to sustain value. Everything else is just theories  

Up until recently we only had physical and paper now we've got crypto as well any idea if the price of cryto backed silver would support or hinder demand for physical?

[Mark10110]

1 minute ago, matrawr said:

Up until recently we only had physical and paper now we've got crypto as well any idea if the price of cryto backed silver would support or hinder demand for physical?

I am into crypto and atm i'm about £2500 down.

Crypto has the right ideas but mass adoption is years away.

People are getting into crypto and buying coins because they sound good or look cheap without understanding what each one stands for.

Early days on Crypto high risk high reward. 

[matrawr]

Yes does seem very risky but if cryptos were to fail surely that would've happened already? 

[Mark10110]

19 minutes ago, matrawr said:

Yes does seem very risky but if cryptos were to fail surely that would've happened already? 

The way I am looking at it, if the economy does well, crypto will do even better. If the economy is failing, gold and silver will raise.

 

I am just betting on both sides

[KDave]

The existing silver market, I reckon we will see some people look to crypto-metals in the future instead of physical. Some of the crypto market will be drawn into silver at that point as well - Crypto worked well in recent collapse situations (Venezuela) that required an alternative means of exchange. This is often cited as a reason to buy physical silver. Physical silver is not as liquid/divisible and crypto-silver would be much harder to steal, impossible to fake, ect. Who knows, I guess it depends on the success of projects like kinesis and such like as to how much new demand we will see form this area. 

I have never been able to see the value in the current ledger crypto currencies, they are effectively free market fiat. But use the ledger technology to keep track of something real and it makes sense.

[RoughDog]

12 minutes ago, Mark10110 said:

The way I am looking at it, if the economy does well, crypto will do even better. If the economy is failing, gold and silver will raise.

 

I am just betting on both sides

Seems to me like when the economy is doing slightly better they raise interest rates and crypto and gold both go down.

Gold doesn't need an internet connection which may be good or bad.  I guess it's bad for crypto if internet providers go down.

[Mark10110]

1 minute ago, RoughDog said:

Seems to me like when the economy is doing slightly better they raise interest rates and crypto and gold both go down.

Gold doesn't need an internet connection which may be good or bad.  I guess it's bad for crypto if internet providers go down.

All speculation atm. If the economy does crash then crypto is dead. No doubts about that

[sixgun]

2 hours ago, matrawr said:

Up until recently we only had physical and paper now we've got crypto as well any idea if the price of cryto backed silver would support or hinder demand for physical?

There is one silver backed crypto - this is Silvertoken SVT. Each SVT is 1oz of silver. On November 12th Kinesis kicks off for those who subscribed to the Kinesis Velocity Tokens. There will be various coins - the KAG is 10g of silver and KWS is 1000oz of silver. There is the KAU, 1g of gold and KWG which is 1kg of gold. Each coin is title of ownership over the metal. i see Silvertoken is talking about having a card linked to your silver holding, this is to trialed in 2019. i had not heard of SVT before today.

Clearly if people start using precious metal cryptocurrencies where the currency is actually backed by metal this will result in a large amount of metal being vaulted and will tighten supply. i expect this will be the trigger to a reset in price and then it is anyone's guess at where that will end.

32 minutes ago, Mark10110 said:

All speculation atm. If the economy does crash then crypto is dead. No doubts about that

Not so - if the economy crashes and fiat accelerates down the drain, this is when people will go to asset backed cryptocurrencies - they have intrinsic value something that fiat does not.

[Mark10110]

If the stock market crashes people are going for silver they hold and not going to trust numbers on a screen. 

[matrawr]

4 hours ago, sixgun said:

There is one silver backed crypto - this is Silvertoken SVT. Each SVT is 1oz of silver. On November 12th Kinesis kicks off for those who subscribed to the Kinesis Velocity Tokens. There will be various coins - the KAG is 10g of silver and KWS is 1000oz of silver. There is the KAU, 1g of gold and KWG which is 1kg of gold. Each coin is title of ownership over the metal. i see Silvertoken is talking about having a card linked to your silver holding, this is to trialed in 2019. i had not heard of SVT before today.

Clearly if people start using precious metal cryptocurrencies where the currency is actually backed by metal this will result in a large amount of metal being vaulted and will tighten supply. i expect this will be the trigger to a reset in price and then it is anyone's guess at where that will end.

Not so - if the economy crashes and fiat accelerates down the drain, this is when people will go to asset backed cryptocurrencies - they have intrinsic value something that fiat does not.

Is the silver crypto like the silver etf where there would not be enough silver to cover demand if wished for in physical? Or do they actually have enough physical to cover and potential delivery?

[sixgun]

30 minutes ago, Mark10110 said:

If the stock market crashes people are going for silver they hold and not going to trust numbers on a screen. 

If they can spend that silver in the shops they will be happy.

 

7 minutes ago, matrawr said:

Is the silver crypto like the silver etf where there would not be enough silver to cover demand if wished for in physical? Or do they actually have enough physical to cover and potential delivery?

The main silver ETF is SLV. There has been much speculation as to whether this is fully backed. The average person cannot redeem the silver and i will say the shares are not fully back - not by a long chalk. i cannot speak for the SVT silver crypto. Kinesis KAG and KWS coins will be fully back. The coins are title of ownership recorded on the Stellar blockchain - silver will be redeemable. The silver will be held in the ABX vaulting system - i have bought and sold physical gold and silver with the ABX on several accounts in the past. The ABX is in the business of vaulting metal and delivering it - the essential extension to the business is title of ownership is on the blockchain and can be utilised as a currency.

[Mark10110]

Like I said, this is all speculation, as for any crypto backed by anything, we just had the first ever “sketchy” internal audit on USDT to see if there is really enough dollars backing that. Nothing else has had any audits. 

Coinbase cleared themselves of insider trading when they got caught buying b-cash before listing it.

charlie lee came under fire for selling litecoin he created for fiat bringing in his own belief in his creation.

with so much questionable behaviour within crypto, there is no chance people will trust it if the economy fails. Like I said we are years away from mass adoption.

if The economy fails we will go back to a barter system like every time in history it has happened on every continent. 

[sixgun]

Kinesis coins will be traded on the Deutsche Borse - the coins e-wallet will be linked to Visa - Mastercard.

The fiat system will collapse - it is a mathematical certainty. So when the remaining GBP in your bank account after the bail in goes Venezuelan bolivar, the world will run on barter. So it will take a step back several hundred years? Kinesis is barter - i have 50 KAU = 50 grammes of gold - what will you give me for my multiple decimal point gold?

I used to imagine come a collapse in fiat we would be bartering pre 1947 coins and ounces of silver but i don't see that now. Gold and silver backed cryptos are starting to be implemented. Be happy they will suck the physical market dry and we will get a price reset.

[AppleZippoandMetronome]

My line of thinking is this...   if the system were to collapse completely would you feel secure that the infrastructure required to actively trade non physical PM's would hold up? Think of the chaos that would follow a complete collapse of the fiat currency. Are the servers going to keep running? Are you going to be able to stay connected to the system so you can trade your non physical PM's?

When the silver is in my hand I have no reliance on outside systems to trade that silver.

I'm not saying that we will see a complete collapse of fiat but as it has been mentioned here I would say the above is worth thinking about. My biggest concern with something like PM backed crypto is how long before that gets exploited? How long before we see the system changed to one that resembles modern banking where they only need to hold 10% (or less) of the actual PM for every coin or unit they sell. I would never trust the human element of this.

[Mark10110]

1 hour ago, AppleZippoandMetronome said:

My line of thinking is this...   if the system were to collapse completely would you feel secure that the infrastructure required to actively trade non physical PM's would hold up? Think of the chaos that would follow a complete collapse of the fiat currency. Are the servers going to keep running? Are you going to be able to stay connected to the system so you can trade your non physical PM's?

When the silver is in my hand I have no reliance on outside systems to trade that silver.

I'm not saying that we will see a complete collapse of fiat but as it has been mentioned here I would say the above is worth thinking about. My biggest concern with something like PM backed crypto is how long before that gets exploited? How long before we see the system changed to one that resembles modern banking where they only need to hold 10% (or less) of the actual PM for every coin or unit they sell. I would never trust the human element of this.

in a collapse for crypto to work you would need a Mobile phone (that you would prob trade for food) 

Internet (who will have this luxury in a collapse)

A method to buy crypto.

with just these things alone we know its speculation and anything we say about crypto during a collapse is redundant.

the idea that crypto will be something we use in a collapse is a dystopian fantasy for the future. 

If there is a collapse in the next 2 years at least, the first think people are doing is selling whatever crypto they have for gold/silver/food and bartering goods. 

a gold/silver backed crypto is not viable at the stage crypto is at, whos holding the gold/silver thats backing crypto? how do we cash the crypto in for the gold/silver? how do we trust this new gen "banker" 

there are too many faults to this idea on an ideology that is in its infancy.

[PansPurse]

Applying Blockchain (well designed for trustless transactions) to physical metals removes the one major benefit of Blockchain, because you're relying on a trusted third party to hold the metal. May as well just use a bank.

[matrawr]

Could these crypto companies or whoever is behind the coin run into trouble? Maybe completely disappear into the abyss or bankers getting involved to keep them afloat? Personally I don't trust cryptos and even banks are dabbling in it. My concern is the bankers will turn cryptos into a more marketable product than physical in the future and like @AppleZippoandMetronomesaid may only need to hold a certain percentage of silver to back it!

[Martlet]

2 hours ago, matrawr said:

Could these crypto companies or whoever is behind the coin run into trouble? Maybe completely disappear into the abyss or bankers getting involved to keep them afloat? Personally I don't trust cryptos and even banks are dabbling in it. My concern is the bankers will turn cryptos into a more marketable product than physical in the future and like @AppleZippoandMetronomesaid may only need to hold a certain percentage of silver to back it!

Absolutely, any crypto that is reliant on a physical presence or any central authority is susceptible to problems. The objective of Bitcoin was to remove this layer, relying only on the cryptography of the core system, without trusting third parties.  Returning to the original question, silver (or gold) represent a good hedge for long term decline of the economy, however in some failed stat scenario they a limited to either hiding or exporting your wealth for a future recovery.  Who is going to go to the food queue and hand over precious silver for their weekly ration?  And if the authorities are seizing silver, gold other assets, having a blockchain title to the asset is pretty redundant. 

[AppleZippoandMetronome]

@Mark10110 That is exactly my point. The only thing that will matter if everything goes down will be what you physically have with you. The systems required to keep trading crypto will disappear fairly quickly in a system collapse.