Dollar Lost Its Silver Definition

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The dollar in your wallet used to have a name, not a nickname, a literal definition. In 1792, Congress legally defined one US dollar as 371 and a quarter grains of pure silver. That was the law. A dollar was silver. So here's the question nobody's asking. If the definition changed, what exactly is a dollar now? And here is why this matters to you right now and your four-legged friends, golden retriever, bizarre metal analyst here. This is not some abstract academic thing. This is your savings, your retirement, your purchasing power. And for the first time in modern history, we're living through a collision. The world is consuming more silver than it can dig out of the ground for six years straight, almost a billion ounces of shortfall, and at the same time, every major government on earth is printing money at a pace that would have been unthinkable just about 20 years ago. And together, those trends are a signal you can't afford to ignore. Because if you don't understand what's happening with silver, you are blind to a structural shift in the global monetary system. But thankfully, we have Winston back here, who is going to explain it for us like we are five. Because you're holding an asset, the dollar, whose very foundation was ripped away. And you don't even know the story of how it happened or what it means for what actually comes next. And most people won't figure it out until it's probably too late. So in the next 20 minutes or so, I'm going to give you the complete picture that 99% of financial media will never show you. You will learn why silver was the real money of civilization for yeaps millennia, the very specific decisions that destroyed that system and what it costs everyday Americans, and why the biggest tech megatrend, solar, EVs, AI, are a collision course with a shrinking supply of silver. And, how do we, the single most powerful signal in precious metal investing. It's not about hype, it's about understanding the system you actually live in so you can protect yourself and maybe just benefit from it. And if you're thinking as you're watching this, hang on, I didn't participate in this glorious silver rally we've just had. I instead bought near the top, and I'm really, really cross with you and possibly even Winston right now. I've got one more offer for you, which is pure free education that we might not repeat all year. And it'll teach you when to sell not just silver, but also anything else, any other stock, be it an AI stock or whatever, because the profits are in the selling. Now, if you're somebody who physically stacks and holds silver and gold, same here, you might not have that horizon. But I'm talking to all of you who are buying the gold ETFs and the gold miners and anything that tracks gold or silver, and you're pissed off, you know, holding on to something that's down. Make that the last time that happens to you, because it is avoidable. I'm going to teach you. So link down below, when to sell.org. It is a free training. We're going to teach a couple of thousand people completely for free, but you get you got to have your ticket, you got to show up on time, no replays. My name is Felix Print. You've already met Winston the Brains behind it all. I'm a former banker economist, I'm a researcher, I'm an educator, I'm not a financial advisor. My goal is to give you the context that us bankers learned. I don't sell silver, I don't get paid by dealers, there is no sponsorship on this channel ever. I just believe that understanding how money actually works is the single most important financial skill you can develop. And silver is where the story begins. So let me show you why. Let's start with the fact that'll change how you think about money. Silver has been used as currency for over 5,000 years. The Sumerians were using silver as money as early as 3,100 before Christ. Don't ask me who the Sumerians are, but it is before the pyramids were allegedly built, if you believe the Egyptian timeline. Go ahead and that rabbit hole, it's an interesting one. But silver predates gold as everyday money. Why? Because gold was too scarce. There simply wasn't enough gold to run an economy. You can't make change for a loaf of bread with a chunk of gold, right? So silver was the people's money. It's abundant enough for daily purchases, rare enough to hold value. So the most important currency in world history, it's not the dollar, it's not the pound. Sorry, Brits. It definitely isn't the euro. It was the Spanish silver dollar, called the Peace of Eight. And this currency circulated globally from 1500 through to the 1800s. 300 years. It was the world's first true reserve currency. It was so trusted, it was legal tender in the United States. Yeah, until the mid-1800s. The US dollar gets its name from this coin. If that surprises you, put uh surprise in the comments down below. And money used to be defined by weight of metal, not by a government promise, not by a central bank's, I was gonna say credibility, how to get that word out in that sentence, but by the actual physical measurable silver. And then we got this lovely thing: the Coinage Act of 1792. When the founders created America, they had to decide what is a dollar. Chap called Alexander Hamilton, who led the effort. And in 1792, the Coinage Act legally defined the US dollar as whatever Jerome Powell thinks it is. No, uh it was it was actually weight. It was the law, right? So one dollar an exact weight of silver. And Hamilton was smart. He designed what's called a bimetallic system. Both gold and silver were legal tender. They were valued at a fixed ratio to each other. Why? Because Hamilton understood something. An economy needs enough money to grow. Gold alone is too rare. Silver gives us the base for everyday transactions. So you could literally melt down your coins and it'd still be worth the same. So the government couldn't print money. They had to find more silver. And then we go to the death, and then we go to the crime of 1873, the worst murder ever. The system where your money was backed by something scarce, real metal, lasted about 80 years in the US. And then in 1873, something happened that changed everything. Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1873. It removed the silver dollar from legal tender status. Silver just got kicked out of the monetary system. America went on the gold only standard. I presume the gold bugs had something to do with that. And it sounds kind of technical, but the effect was pretty brutal. The money supply shrunk. America entered what's called the Long Depression. 25 years of falling prices. Farmers were crushed because they were borrowing money to buy seeds to plant crops. But by harvest time, prices had fallen so much they couldn't pay back their debts. Wages fell, unemployment spiked, and ordinary people were completely destroyed. And people literally call this the crime of 1873. And they literally meant it because it was a backroom deal engineered, allegedly, by certain financial elites on Wall Street, by limiting money to just gold. The wealthy could hoard it and they could control the economy. The people who used silver, the farmers, the workers, the miners, the Western side of the US, they lost all their power. And then in 1971, Nixon put the final nail in the coffin. He severed the dollar's last link to something precious. The dollar was now not backed by silver or gold, it was backed by uh trust in the government. Trust me. So in under 100 years, money went from something you could weigh and measured and meltdown to something you just gotta trust me on it, right? So if silver isn't money anymore, what actually is it? And by the way, if you're a gold or silver bug and you want to stay informed on this, we have a we have a metals app as well, where A, we keep you informed of what's going on in the world, uh, literally in the sense of you know, what are central banks doing in the world with their gold and metal holdings? You can literally see it here live. Um, Winston gives you an update on it, on whatever the latest data is. We give you mining, energy, military news that affects gold and silver. And then, say, if you're a real silver bug, you click on silver, and we measure whether the smart money is buying or selling. We tell you what happens next, typically. Uh, we tell you what the people in the East are doing, Asia, the Kermex inventory, where that's going. And also something that almost no one understands when is it ripe for a squeeze, right? Um, and we give you all the data here. We also explain to you exactly how that works. Data you can track and and use, I think, to make better decisions. And it's like$6.23 a week or something like that. So it's insanely affordable because I believe in making data affordable. So you want to check that out? There's a link down below below to that as well. But what is silver today? Silver has a dual identity, sort of um schizophrenic. It is still a precious metal. People buy it as a store of wealth, right? Like gold. But it is also an industrial metal. It's critical for all the technology that's really, really going nuts. And right now, 60% of all silver demand is industrial. 60%. Gold is only about 10%. So it makes silver very different. So why are industries obsessed with silver? Because silver has three very unique properties. It's the most electrically conductive metal on earth. It is better than copper. It is even better than gold. It is also the most thermally conductive metal. It's critical for managing heat in electronics. It is also the most reflective making, very essential for solar panels. And for many applications, there's just no substitute at any price or at a price close to silver. You can't just swap in copper or aluminium. The technology doesn't work out. The technology basically doesn't work without silver. And the single biggest industrial user of silver, solar panels. Every solar panel requires silver for connectivity. So the industry is, of course, trying to use less silver because it's expensive. They've reduced silver content per panel about 30% of the last decade. So you might think, ah yeah, demand's going to crash. Oh dear, but I think you're probably wrong. Because global solar installations are exploding. Why? Not because people really want them, it's policy-driven. Governments have mandated massive solar build-outs, and we expect solar capacity to triple by 2030. And the most cutting-edge, most efficient solar technologies actually use more silver than actually use more silver, not less. So the solar demand for silver actually keeps rising again and again. But solar isn't the only driver. Let me show you three mega trends that are all consuming silver at record rates. Electric vehicles. An EV uses about two times the silver of a traditional gas guzzler, why? More electrical contacts, more sensors, batteries, power inverters, all that stuff. Every switch, every connection, some silver in it. And forecasts are by 2030, half of all new car sales are EVs. You might not be one of those who wants to buy one, but Tesla's obviously doing a good job. BYD and others are too. Tens of millions of vehicles demanding silver. Second, you've got um AI. AI data centers, AI data centers require massive computing power. And that generates a lot of heat. Silver is used in the thermal management systems to stop these expensive chips from overheating. So the AI boom, it's just starting. Data center construction is accelerating, it's going to be around for a long time. And then third, you've got 5G and actual semiconductors. They need, they each use silver and the circuitry and the antennas. And silver condent per chip is actually increasing. It's not decreasing because it's all about speed and power and energy efficiency. So the technologies that are defining the century depend on silver. And here is where silver becomes very different from gold. Gold is hoarded, yes. Almost every ounce of gold ever mined still exists there. It sits in vaults, jewelry, central banks, right? It isn't consumed or very little. It's recycled. Silver is consumed. It's used in tiny amounts, micrograms per device, spread across billions of products, your phone, your laptop, your car, your solar panels, your medical devices. And once it's in a phone or a car, it's just not really recoverable at a reasonable cost. The cost to extract a few milligrams of silver from a circuit board exceeds its value. So what does it mean? Every phone you've ever owned, every solar panel on a rooftop, every EV on the road, every data, every AI data center, they're all eating into the global silver supply permanently. So think about this. Every time you use your phone, drive past a solar farm or hear about new AI data centers, silver made that possible. And most of it will never be recovered. So we have a metal that's being consumed at a record pace, and the obvious question is, how much is there around? And let me show you. Now, if you're still here half listening and still wondering why you're down on silver, sign up for the life frame. So you will never ever sell something too late ever again. That applies to gold, to silver, to stocks, to anything really. Links down below in the description. When to sell.org. We've covered demand now, right? We know there's lots of it. What about supply? Well, for six years straight, the world has consumed more silver than the miners could dig out of the ground. 2021 deficit, 2022 deficit, 2023 deficit, 2024 deficit, 2025 deficit. 2026? Yeah, it's projected to be a deficit of 67 million ounces this year. So from 2021 to now, we're probably going to be short about one billion ounces of silver. And that billion ounces got consumed. So where did it come from if it didn't come out of the ground? Warehouses, ETF holdings, exchange stockpiles. If you're wondering where all the uh Comex silver is going, yeah, drawn down year after year. The physical metal is getting tighter. So you might not be thinking, okay, silver demand so strong. Why don't the miners just dig out more? It's a great question. That's the problem. And I literally have a friend who is mining silver and we're talking about it. Um it's a byproduct. It doesn't come from dedicated silver mines. It comes from lead mines, zinc mines, copper mines, maybe some gold mines. Silver is the side product, the main product of something else. What does that mean? Silver price can go to$100 an ounce,$200 an ounce. The miners can't just turn on the tap. Their production decisions are driven by the economics of lead and zinc and copper. Nothing to do with silver. So if copper prices fall, they cut production. Silver supply falls with it. And this makes silver supply very well, an economist would say, inelastic. Apologies for that. It just means that prices can rise, but supply still doesn't come online. Supply is locked to the demand of other things. And as our second problem, building a new mine takes 10 to 15 years. Exploration, permitting, constructions, um, litigation around, you know, the rare silver toad that lives in the vicinity. So even if the miners wanted to start new mines, probably take them a decade or more. So the deficit is structural, the industry can't fix it quickly. Now, if this was anything else, this would be front-page news, right? But it isn't. And you've got to ask yourself why. But we try not to go too conspiratorial on this channel. So I want to give you a tool that professional precious metal investors use every day. It's called the gold to silver ratio. And it basically takes the price of an ounce of gold and it divides it by the price of one ounce of silver. That number is the ratio. So it tells you how many ounces of silver does it take to buy one ounce of the big brother gold. And in the 20th century, the average was around 47. More recently, it fluctuated between 50. We're not allowed to write, are we? No, no, no. Microsoft says uh take my word for it. Uh it's in recent decades, it's fluctuated between 50 and 70. It's quite as high as 100 in some extreme markets like 2020. So, how how do you read it? It's in our uh methods tool. When you are high, so it's say 80, silver is usually really cheap, right? It's when you might want to accumulate. Okay, it's obviously your decision, I'm not telling you what to do. But historically, we don't stay in that sort of 80 to 100 high. When we are below 60, silver is usually outperforming. So when silver is relatively expensive compared to gold, it's often a signal, maybe take some profits, maybe you rebalance, right? But the ratio tends to revert to the average. And you can see that here, average here is about 60. We're at the moment at 60. But it swings dramatically. We hit 120 in 2020, then fell down to the 70 in just a couple of months. So silver doubled in that period, while gold rose not a lot. So if you learn to read this one number, and Winston literally explains it for you on here, and you tell you whether we think it's fair value or not, obviously you can come to your own conclusion. You understand the precious metals market better than most financial advisors. Yeah. You can check that in the in the community if you wish to check it out. But there are some risks with silver. I think this is one of the most glorious opportunities there is out there, and I'm not a financial advisor. It doesn't mean you should run out and buy it. I see the excitement is gone, right? We've come down again. The fundamental scarcity is still there, the demand, the lack of supply. So I think in the long run this will do very well. But I'm not here to sell you silver or a fantasy. I have no um incentive to do so. And it has risks, real ones. And you might have just seen that. And if you don't understand them, you'll get hurt, maybe again. So let me be very clear. Silver is an illiquid market that is very, very, very volatile. That means 30 to 50% moves are common. Hi. So it's not from the faint of heart. It is not for people who have no risk management. So if you buy silver and the price drops 40%, you need to be able to stomach that or buy less or learn some exit rules, but I'm going to teach you if you join the training. There is also the risk that industries are going to figure out a way to use less of it. If they succeed at it, the demand will maybe level out. There are things like copper nanowires, graphene, other materials that could be a substitute. So far, they haven't matched silver's performance at scale, but it is a long-term risk to watch. So if silver goes to 200, the incentive for them to figure that out is just much, much higher. Now, third, silver is also sensitive to central bankers. Doesn't like them. Interest rates on the US dollars have a big impact. So if the Fed keeps interest rates higher, silver gets hit, it goes lower. A strong dollar also makes silver more expensive for all us foreign buckers who've got to buy in dollars, and it therefore reduces the demand. And then lastly, I want to bust some myths here about silver that keep otherwise smart people on the sidelines. So let me take them apart one by one. The first myth is that silver is just Pullman's gold. That might have been the case in the past, but gold is now primarily a monetary metal. Central banks buy it. Investors hoarded. Silver has a massive industrial demand profile that gold doesn't have. 60% of silver is used for industrial, only 10% of gold is used for industrial. So silver is part of the technology of the future. It's not a lesser version of gold. It is a very different asset. Gold's your insurance. Silver is insurance plus industrial leverage, right? Myth number two, it's just too volatile. It's just not safe. Volatility does not, by that I mean up and down in price. It doesn't equal risk. Silver's purpose in a portfolio is not day trading. It is still long-term wealth preservation and diversification. So for the long run, silver has consistently been a good hedge against inflation. In the 70s, when inflation raged, silver went from$1.50 to$50. In the 2000s, we went from$4 to$49. So if you're buying silver for the right reasons to protect against currency debasement, inflation, the volatility doesn't really matter so much. The third myth is then it's hard to buy, it's hard to store. Buying silver is as easy as ordering anything online. Find a reputable dealer. I'm not affiliated with any, I don't get paid by any. They're offered all the bloody time. I don't want it. But there are big dealers out there that will ship to your door. Storage gets stored at home. You have immediate access, but it's risky, right? So I prefer to put things into insured vaults, third-party storage companies that are audited, everything is tracked, they're legitimate guys. There are also newer companies out there, digital companies that let you own physical silver in their stored vaults, and you can trade it online at fractions. So silver is actually very easy to own. And then lastly, and if you're still here, you're probably not one of those, but a lot of people still just think silver is obsolete, that it's sort of an old relic. Well, what we've just learned is that it's literally embedded in the future: solar panels, electric vehicles, AI, chips, 5G, medical devices, water purification, all silver. So the relevance is actually increasing, not decreasing. So the idea that it's your grandmother's silver coin collection is just not true in any way, shape, or form. So let me leave you with a big picture of how to think about silver. Silver isn't a get-rich quick play, it is insurance against the dollar losing value. It is a hedge against a whole feared system and inflation. So you don't buy silver because you think the world is ending. You buy it because you understand how money actually works. The dollar loses purchasing power every year. It's guaranteed, just a system. Silver has preserved that wealth for 5,000 years. So the combination we have is rare because we've got this industrial demand, we've got structural deficits, monetary demand, protection, and the supply deficit. So does this happen often? No, I don't think it does. I think this is a really, really, really rare setup that I think is a big, beautiful, shiny opportunity if you understand it correctly. So I said at the beginning, if you don't understand Sylvia, you don't understand money. Now you do. You want to go deeper into tracking what's going on in that industry. Um, check out our Metals app at uh the link down below in the description. You got some value out of this, share with somebody else. I thank you for watching. Every morning you open your phone and there's a new reason to panic. Tariffs, debt, Middle East, de dollarization bricks, and every finance guy on the internet and mainstream media is selling you.