The Coming AI Mega-IPOs and Their Effect on Gold and Silver
A central question hanging over markets right now is whether the wave of enormous technology offerings — the SpaceX IPO, plus the potential public listings of Anthropic and OpenAI — will drain liquidity and energy out of every other corner of the market, including precious metals. The concern is that these deals could "suck all the oxygen" out of competing assets.
The answer, based on the fundamentals, is no: these offerings should not hurt gold and silver. They will hurt the broader market instead. The reasoning is that crypto and Bitcoin are far more closely correlated with AI than the precious-metals sector is. Crypto and metals represent two opposing ideologies, so AI mania is unlikely to pull capital out of metals the way it pulls it out of Bitcoin. To the contrary, the AI wave is more likely to damage some of the "Magnificent Seven" stocks and Bitcoin itself.
This matters because the headline indices are dangerously narrow. The S&P 500 and Russell 2000 are essentially being held up by roughly ten stocks. Pull the oxygen out of those ten names and the market could fall far harder than precious metals would, because the person buying Anthropic, SpaceX, Apple, Tesla, or the Alphabet stocks is not the person buying gold.
There is a counter-argument worth weighing. When OpenAI and Anthropic come to market, those will be monster deals — each likely valued close to a trillion dollars, each probably raising on the order of $50 billion. By comparison, SpaceX raised about $75 billion (roughly 555 million shares at $135 each). The problem is that the buyers of these new offerings already hold enormous gains in existing positions. If they lack large cash reserves, they may be forced to go on margin to free up cash — and margin debt is already at all-time highs. That sets up a potential disaster.
The real stress point is timing. About six months out, when the lockup periods on these IPOs expire, holders will be free to sell. Heavy selling could exert such an enormous weight on the market that it triggers another round of margin calls. And when forced liquidation hits, it does not discriminate: miners, silver, and gold all get thrown out with the bathwater and sink together, regardless of their fundamentals. One very successful hedge-fund manager shared the view that the market would stay steady until these three offerings (SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic) came out, and would then "really take it on the chin." That said, a true watershed selling event of that magnitude may never have been seen before, so the timing of any collapse is uncertain.
Silver had recently been trading "like a meme stock," with heavy retail interest as the price rose, and it has been pulling speculative oxygen away from crypto and Bitcoin. But the speculative side of silver is not expected to be meaningfully impaired by the AI IPOs, again because Bitcoin — not metals — is the asset tethered to the AI narrative.
The Lesson of Concentration: Take Chips Off the Table
The fastest fortunes can become the slowest exits when concentration replaces discipline. SpaceX alone reportedly created around 4,400 millionaires overnight — everyone from cafeteria workers and janitors to the people building the steel infrastructure of the rockets. When their lockups expire and they get the chance to sell, the prudent move is to take at least some money off the table and diversify.
No matter how good a company is, it is almost irresponsible not to harvest some gains when given the opportunity. The cautionary tale is a father-in-law who worked at Bear Stearns from 1980 until the firm collapsed. Every paycheck, a set amount was funneled into an executive compensation plan to buy Bear Stearns stock. Every single time his shares vested, he sold the maximum he was allowed — and he survived. Those who didn't sell "got stugats" — nothing. The same discipline applies even to committed gold and silver holders: it is wise to keep other assets in other places, not because metals will fail, but because, as the old market adage goes, you must above all "avoid the big loss." Liquidity events tempt people to mistake paper wealth for permanent wealth, and history rewards those who harvest gains before the narrative reverses.
Silver Price Targets and the Logic of Price Floors
There is currently no official update on silver's price. The personal estimate is that silver belongs somewhere in the $70 range. The technical case is encouraging: silver held the $60 level, and every time it dips into the $60s there is big buying — someone steps in to absorb the selling. The fact that it shot right back up into the $70 range signals that buyers see good value at these levels. That $70–$75 zone is likely close to where government price floors would be set.
There is a deep, gut-level conviction that this year will end substantially higher than where prices stand now, with silver reaching triple digits by year-end — and not merely scraping the surface of $100, but blowing well past it. When silver briefly touched higher levels back in January, that move was far more momentum- and FOMO-driven: everyone was talking about it on CNBC and Bloomberg, and then the same outlets pivoted to calling it overbought and overvalued. A repricing driven by genuine structural demand would be different and more durable. Another respected analyst remains steadfast on a $300–$500 target for silver, and the point stands that you cannot reach $300 without first passing through $100 or $200.
It is worth distinguishing price ceilings from price floors. Ceilings get the attention, but floors reveal who is quietly defending the market from underneath. Repeated buying around key levels signals conviction, even if today's price reflects momentum rather than fully priced-in future scarcity. The danger is that investors confuse speculative spikes with institutional accumulation and therefore enter too late. The smarter discipline is to watch who absorbs selling pressure, not who shouts the loudest forecast.
Silver Supply: The Uncomfortable Math Behind a "Rich Mine"
On the report that silver demand is "exploding" and that the U.S. holds the world's richest mine in Silver Valley: that specific reporting had not been seen, and it would be worth knowing where the claim that demand is exploding originates. What is verifiable is that demand at the highest, institutional levels is rising dramatically. China imported more silver in the first quarter than at any point in the country's history, and COMEX is seeing huge deliveries. At the institutional level, silver demand is very, very high. At the retail level, by contrast, most people are still asleep to it.
A new domestic mine fits into the idea of a "Project Vault" — developing a strategic silver stockpile and putting a price floor under silver to bring forth domestic mining companies. The catch is the math of supply. Even a genuinely enormous find at Silver Valley runs into the fact that roughly 75% of all silver is not mined from silver mines at all; it is a byproduct of mining other metals — mostly copper, lead, and zinc. Unless capacity to mine those base metals expands exponentially, you simply will not see a substantial increase in silver output. That is precisely why governments would implement price floors: to incentivize domestic silver mining that has historically been uneconomic.
This produces a harder question. Markets celebrate new discoveries while ignoring the uncomfortable math behind real supply growth. Record imports and delivery activity matter more than headlines about a single mine, because production is bound to base-metal economics. And if governments are discussing strategic stockpiles and pricing support, they may be preparing for shortage, not abundance. Savers who assume that supply automatically expands with price may find the market far tighter than expected.
The Quiet Architecture of Gold-Backed Treasuries
Much of what was once dismissed as fringe is now coming true: the push to bring back manufacturing, the Genius Act, and the role gold is set to play. A telling signal was the appointment of Paul Winfrey as an advisor to the Fed Chairman. Winfrey is an economist who has worked with the administration and who authored a chapter (chapter 24) of Project 2025 advocating the issuance of gold-backed treasuries. That such a figure would be among the first advisors appointed is highly significant.
In his own words, Winfrey wrote that "beyond full backing, alternate paths to gold backing might involve gold-convertible treasury instruments or allowing a parallel gold standard to operate temporarily alongside the current fiat dollar." A full parallel standard is unlikely; the more probable route is a Treasury-eased adoption that minimizes disruption — possibly temporary — so the country can "quickly enjoy the benefits of gold's ability to police government spending."
This is the timing tell. Policy language about convertibility and parallel systems is appearing before the public debate has caught up. When advisers begin floating these concepts, it suggests financial architecture is being tested quietly ahead of any rollout. The real risk is not missing a rally; it is misunderstanding what institutions are preparing for beneath the headlines.
Several states — Texas and Florida among them — already allow individuals to use commodity-backed money, and Congress could simply permit individuals to use commodity-backed money without fully replacing the current system. The function of gold backing on a treasury would be to act as a "sounding board" or alarm: if monetary policy became too reckless, gold would keep marching higher and higher, sounding the alarm. Crucially, backing a treasury with gold is not the same as a full gold standard in which monetary policy is constrained by the quantity of gold held. A gold-backed treasury would let policymakers do both — restore confidence and a disciplinary signal without surrendering control over policy.
This distinction is the heart of the matter. Commodity-linked treasury ideas are less about returning to an old monetary system and more about restoring confidence without surrendering policy flexibility. Savers often mistake symbolic backing for genuine discipline. The portfolio question is not whether the announcement happens, but whether the underlying incentives quietly change first.
July 4th, Fort Knox, and the 50/50 Bet
There is a concrete near-term catalyst in play. Judy Shelton has told multiple interviewers that Trump told her he intends to issue gold-backed treasuries "more or less on July 4th." Asked about the odds of Trump announcing a 50-year Treasury backed by gold, the honest assessment is 50/50 — an uncomfortable prediction to make, given it is only a few weeks out.
If it happens, it would be the greatest call ever made, and it would signal that the country is on a path toward restoring manufacturing and giving the next generation a future — enough to stay up all night on July 3rd waiting for the announcement. Even a simpler gesture would change the entire narrative for the rest of the year: getting up and saying that the government will audit Fort Knox and perhaps tie something to a 50-year Treasury in honor of the nation's 250th anniversary. And if it does not happen, it would not be the end of the story.
Why No Revaluation Is Needed
If Trump does make the announcement, does that imply a "revaluation" of the metal? No — and that is the key insight. A revaluation is not necessary, which is why Treasury Secretary Bessent has stated that gold will not be revalued.
The mechanism works differently and more elegantly. Tether, whose USA Tether arm is now run by Bo Hines (formerly Trump's crypto point person — "wink wink, nod nod"), has been quietly buying gold. In fact, over the past two years Tether has bought more gold than anyone except Poland. The plan, as it unfolds, is for stablecoin issuers — Tether first, and potentially JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, and others — to buy gold with the interest earned on their reserves. Under the relevant legislation (referred to as the Clarity Act), they cannot simply transfer all the value, so they channel it into gold.
This lets the government accumulate gold by proxy. It is not the U.S. government openly buying — it is not "in everyone's face" — but the government effectively builds its gold stack by buying quietly from Tether, JP Morgan, and similar institutions issuing stablecoins. Organically pushing reserves into gold replaces the synthetic demand for U.S. Treasuries, without the Fed having to do it directly.
The chain of consequences is deliberate: push the dollar down so the country can pay off its debt more easily and sell manufacturing to the world; push gold higher, which devalues the dollar; and that higher gold price simultaneously enables convertibility on the treasuries being sold. By the time those bonds mature — 20, 30, 40, or 50 years out — the price of gold is far higher, so the gold owed is a fraction of what would have to be surrendered today.
The Bond Math That Makes It "Elegant"
The numbers illustrate why this structure is so attractive to a government. VanEck stated that if the dollar lost reserve status, gold could reach $139,000 an ounce — their number, not a personal forecast. Consider a $20 million bond due in 20 years. Priced in gold today, that obligation equals about 4,500 ounces. But at $139,000 per ounce, the same $20 million is only about 120 to 130 ounces — a vastly smaller commitment.
So an issuer could enjoy zero upfront borrowing costs when selling those bonds to fund the rebuilding of manufacturing, and benefit from the constant appreciation of gold along the way. When the bonds finally come due decades later, the country gives up only a fraction of the gold it would otherwise have had to surrender today. The whole design is "elegant" and self-reinforcing.
The deeper takeaway is that governments rarely announce revaluations outright. They create the conditions that make markets do the repricing for them. The official story emphasizes debt sustainability, yet every proposed solution depends on weaker currency purchasing power. The overlooked mechanism is not direct gold revaluation but the construction of demand channels — through stablecoins, convertible treasuries, and capital flows — that gradually pull capital into hard assets over decades. That shifts the entire conversation from price targets to "monetary plumbing." Policy shifts rarely announce themselves before portfolios feel them.
Will COMEX Default — and What Happens to Dealers?
On the question of how metals dealers would hedge their inventory when COMEX defaults: the more likely outcome is that COMEX does not default at all. Instead, the exchange will change the rules to keep it from defaulting. It could declare force majeure — which is functionally the same as a default — but even then it would presumably still offer the service. (One can only hope so, because if the exchange ceased to function, dealers would lose their hedging mechanism entirely.)
The broader principle is that everyone watches where markets crash, while almost nobody watches who gets protected when stress appears. Rule changes and liquidity absorption matter far more than dramatic default narratives, because institutions are built to preserve the continuity of the system. The subtler danger is that speculative capital rotating into AI leaves other assets temporarily mispriced — which is exactly why investors should separate narrative excitement from genuine structural demand.
The Throughline
Across silver supply, gold-backed treasuries, stablecoin gold accumulation, and the AI-IPO liquidity risk, a single message emerges: the most important changes in purchasing power are engineered quietly, beneath the headlines, before the public — and retail savers — catch on. Central banks and policymakers appear to be positioning for a devaluation cycle rather than deflation. Retail tends to lag institutional money by roughly 18 months. The investor who watches incentives, supply math, and who absorbs selling pressure — rather than who makes the loudest forecast — is the one most likely to preserve wealth as the monetary architecture shifts underneath everyone's feet.
