The Precious Metals Markets, Speculation, Technology Demand and a Market That Feels Familiar Yet Fundamentally Different

The renewed speculation sweeping through precious metals markets has drawn inevitable comparisons to the late 1970s, when the Hunt brothers attempted to corner the silver market and sent prices soaring before a dramatic collapse. Today’s environment, however, is structurally different. While speculation is once again present in gold, silver, platinum, and palladium, it is being reinforced by forces that did not exist decades ago: technology-driven demand, institutional accumulation of physical metal and the rise of tokenization as a bridge between traditional commodities and digital finance.

One of the most notable shifts is the accumulation of physical metals by technology-adjacent entities, including stablecoin issuers that hold hard assets as part of their reserve strategies. At the same time, industrial demand has intensified. Gold, silver, platinum and palladium are no longer viewed solely as monetary hedges or jewelry inputs, they are critical components in modern technology. These metals are widely used across electronics and advanced manufacturing, including circuit boards, semiconductors, connectors, sensors, microprocessors, soldering materials and thin-film coatings. Companies at the forefront of global innovation, such as Tesla, Apple, Samsung, Nvidia and Dell, either manufacture or depend on supply chains that rely heavily on these materials. As electrification, AI infrastructure and semiconductor production scale globally, the structural demand for precious metals continues to deepen.

Yet, not all metals are created equal. Silver, while benefiting from strong industrial usage, remains more abundant than gold. Platinum and palladium, by contrast, are significantly rarer than gold and are concentrated geographically, particularly in South Africa and Russia. This imbalance raises an increasingly common question among market participants, are platinum and palladium still laggards or are they mispriced relative to their scarcity and industrial importance?

According to Louis Velazquez, Managing Partner of FGA Partners, this disparity has been evident for years. Velazquez has publicly pointed to silver’s upside when it traded in the low $30 range and highlighted platinum’s value proposition when it was below $1,000, arguing that technology-driven demand would eventually assert itself across the complex.

Tokenization has added another layer to the current cycle. Digital representations of physical metals are making it easier for global investors to gain exposure without traditional storage or logistics constraints. While this improves market access and liquidity, it also accelerates capital flows, feeding into a “too fast, too soon” dynamic that can exaggerate price moves. Unlike the Hunt brothers’ era, where leverage and physical hoarding distorted the market, today’s momentum is amplified by digital infrastructure and instantaneous capital deployment. That does not eliminate risk, it redistributes it.

Ultimately, how much further prices can rise depends on who you ask and on how demand, supply, and financial innovation intersect. What is clear is that precious metals are no longer operating in isolation. They sit at the crossroads of technology, finance and geopolitics. Whether this cycle proves sustainable or overheated will be determined not by speculation alone, but by the continued integration of gold, silver, platinum and palladium into the technologies that increasingly define the global economy.