Not sure how they calculate this, but 3 billions seems really low, that's not even 4 years of mining total supply. Even if you remove 60% of it destroyed by industrial demand, it leaves 320Moz/year destined to investment/potential investment vehicles, in this i count : comex bars, rounds/coins, jewelry, silverware.
So our total silver in circulation (once again i'm not sure what to do with this term, it's a bit vague since currently zero currency uses silver) is approx. equal to 10 years of investment grade silver.
It's not much at all... We mine silver since the dawn of time, and it's precious so people take care of it, there is still a lot of 1960s junk out there, i don't see how we can end up with reserves of only 3 billions oz left??
I only see 3 options :
this figure isn't accurate
like, at all
the "circulation" doesn't match my definition
could very well be that, but even if it only encompass only .999 bars & coins the figure seems low
our deficit is MUCH larger (or happening since much longer) than the current 200Moz they claim we are consooming in excess to production each year
If so, unreal how bullish it would be, because it means we may consume 1 and half year -or more- of silver production each year, and no way to fix the lack of supply. At this pace it wont take long before all silver reserves above ground completely disappear. After all, it's not been that long since as advanced civilization we mine mindblowing quantities of silver. In one year nowaday we mine what mankind used to mine in one MILLENIA (850Moz) during the feudal/middle age/renaissance.
But i don't see why the silver institute wouldn't mention it in their yearly reports.
So which one it is to your opinion?