 Hello. Today we're having a panel on silver, the technology metal and market. I'm Chris Thompson for e-research and I'm here with a very distinguished panel who are going to talk about silver and the silver market. To my left I have Peter Clousy from Silver Bullet Mines. I have Byron King who is a columnist for Investor Intel. I have Chris Ball from Bald Eagle Gold and I have Simon Ridgway from Volcanic Gold Mines. How are you today guys? Very good. Well thanks to be here. Silver has been used as an instrument of trade for thousands of years as a precious metal but more and more modern times we're seeing it using as a technology metal so we're going to sort of discuss today the silver of the silver market where things are going and how it's being used in some of your thoughts. Is that a good place to start? Sure. So the precious metal market has sort of had a peak in the last little while. The highest it's been in the last 10 years although in the last few months it's come off a little bit. Why don't we start with Byron you give us a little bit of an overview of the silver market. Well silver as you mentioned has two functions. It's sort of it has a monetary field to it but a heavily industrial field to it as well. You know when people say oh we're going to do solar panels well that means we're going to do silver panels. In a lot of respects silver is the next lithium. At the same time you know silver moves quite closely with gold as a monetary metal when gold sells off as is the case right now as we speak during a market sell-down. When gold drops silver drops as well but silver should have its day as things unfold just as there's not enough copper in the world to run all the wires there's not enough silver in the world to do all the electronics that you know that the world has planned for itself. And Simon what about your thoughts on the silver market? Well you know it's been a the gold-silver ratio has always been a little a lot better for silver. I'm going to argue with you about that gold-silver ratio. I'm coming back to you. Yeah I mean you know I'm an explorationist so I look I look for the positive to the economic at today's price. I'm not ready to predict where the prices are going to go. So today's silver is just over $20. You know I think I've found a couple of mines silver mines over the last 15 years and they would both make money at this price of silver so you know silver got upside in the future I think so but today's price is good today if you find you know something with three or four ounces but done it would probably be good to go. What about you your thoughts about the silver market? Oh yeah I mean I couldn't agree more I mean I think I think we're seeing a bit of a dash for cash right now you know the general equities are certainly rolling over you know real estate is probably top-toe you know the crypto market is crashing so you know people are selling a lot of other asset classes right now is a lot of fear in the market and you know we're seeing a dash for cash but you know when the inflation is upwards of 9% you know we're hitting 40 year highs that's not exactly the safest place to keep your cash either to keep your wealth either I should say so you know I think I think people are going to start catching on to precious metals and gold and silver in particular I mean I think gold is going to be a very safe place to store your wealth but I think investors looking for more leverage are going to look at silver which you know typically will outperform gold in times like this. Peter your thoughts on the silver market? Welcome back to the gold silver ratio later speaking corporately and selfishly we don't care and that's because we are production is imminent at our silver mine so we don't look at the long-term macro we're not looking at the broader environment right now we're maniacally focused on getting our mind into production so the ratio and the macro don't matter to us we know what our numbers are we can make money get the mind into production. That keeps about that price you're going to be okay. Yeah we know what that price is we don't have a PEA so I can't tell you but we know what that price is. So we mentioned the gold silver ratio before so let's just briefly talk about that and we don't get Byron to explain for people who may not know what the gold silver ratio is and we can go from there. Sure the gold silver ratio basically is how many ounces of silver does it take to buy an ounce of gold or if you had an ounce of gold how many ounces of silver in the olden days of the United States when there were $20 gold pieces and $1 silver dollars the ratio was 20 to 1 goes back to the founding the Republic in fact Alexander Hamilton set the ratio at 15 to 1 and it was a scandal a few years later when the ratio went to 16 to 1 but for almost a century over a century it was 20 to 1 but today for example right now as we speak before we came on camera gold was selling at something around $1830 silver was selling at something around under 21 if you do the math that's around 90 to 1 or so 90 to 1 is not 20 to 1 so people might say that gold is overvalued people might say silver is undervalued I think I think it's more like silver is undervalued and you know but but if silver were to catch up to the historical you know 20 to 1 or something like that ratio I mean you're looking at a very significant multiple of silver move in terms of price that's big macro kind of stuff but that's what the silver ratio is in a general sense you look like you're ready to go ready to go you've heard me say this before the golden silver ratio is no longer the golden silver ratio it's now what people think the gold and silver market will be it's like if you go to Vegas those aren't the odds those are what the odds makers set as the odds based on what they think you're going to bet that's why the Yankees always have a lot of money on them because they're such a well-known franchise the Dallas Cowboys are the same thing the gold silver ratio is the same thing you're now betting against other people betting on the gold silver ratio you're no longer tracking the gold silver ratio so you think in the marketplace itself it's not telling something but the fundamentals of the market it's always nice to take money from the newbies I think the gold silver ratio I mean you know from the time I've been involved in exploration we should probably ask 20 years it's been in that 60 to one range I mean it's been up in a hundred to one recently but I think there's a better upside in silver than there is in gold for that reason and silver is also now not just an investment metal but it's a you know it's a battery metal so to speak so I think there's a better upside in silver than there is in gold well you can see silver doubling you can't see gold double that's that's what I was just going to say right now with with golds at I think 1850 so if you want to double your money and gold's got to go to 3700 which could happen don't get me wrong but but right now silver's trading closer to 20 bucks so I mean you know silver could could much easier I mean silver's gone to $50 just recently in 2011 it did it before in 1980 so it's done it twice before so I think you're that price the tougher gold was about 2000 so golds come up you know 10% and silver's come up by 50% all right let me just throw throw something into that discussion as well when the price of gold drifts down you know people say well it's because the dollar is strengthening and you know it gets back to that old argument that the dollar is the cleanest dirty shirt in the laundromat you know but but what's going on with the dollar is that Europe is in huge trouble you know because of the Russia Ukraine matter and then Europe is running out of energy they basically shot themselves in both feet with both barrels of the shotgun and now they're taking a pistol and they're blowing each hand off and whatever in terms of you were shutting off natural gas shutting off well they don't have any energy Europe's going to have a tough tough tough time going ahead until they get their act together so a lot of that European money moves to the dollar the dollar strengthens in a nominal sense and that helps to put a lid on gold prices which again tends to you know depress the silver price as well just because like you say the odds makers you're you know you're betting on what the odds makers think the odds are going to be but but you know the dollar strength is really an artifact of Euroland weakness and that's an artifact of incredibly bad diplomacy that has basically you know lost them a war and it's costing them their energy to run Europe with but that's all another story so one related unrelated thing is both Canada and the United States have a list of critical metals silver's not on that list in either country it should be it absolutely should be absolutely because you're going to be mining silver but should it be I mean is you know is it that critical to the is it that critical to battery metals to electric cars to telephones well I think it is definitely is definitely I mean it's a byproduct of a lot of mines so let's talk about the supply side so it you know is the price of silver then influenced by the current supply side it's a byproduct of many mines there's not a lot of original silver production out there let's talk what the silver explorers and we'll get to the silver producers soon but on the exploration side how do you see this you know looking at looking for silver assets you know are they harder to find is that going to influence the price of silver I think gold silver they're all harder to find over the last 20 years because of exploration companies such as Volcanico to spend pretty much worldwide and getting the investment capital to explore for it but I think there's still a lot of silver deposits primary silver deposits to be found Central America I mean the difficult part is where most of the silver deposits are Peru Argentina Mexico exploration and permitting is getting way way more difficult in all of those countries so you know the challenge of finding more deposits isn't just a year the exploration upside it's getting permitted getting the social license to exploring those areas which is by difficult now in Central America and South America in general yeah well like you said it's getting more and more challenging to find primary silver I mean silver is quite often a byproduct you know at many other copper and gold mines so finding pure play or primary silver and safe jurisdictions is is definitely becoming increasingly challenging all the easy stuff has has been found the low hanging fruit is gone more science needed so more votes on the ground basically from the silver institute roughly 1.2 billion dollars a billion ounces of production in 2021 roughly 25 came from primary silver mines roughly 10 came from recycling so that's 65 percent where it's a byproduct of nickel copper iron the usual suspects so does that mean that those those producing mines can you know change their production to meet the demand for silver or to lower the price no I think more discoveries needed more discovery of primary silver deposits or even gold silver copper silver deposits I think this like I said I think there's still a lot more to be found it's just it's a slower process now exploration is more difficult permitting is way more difficult so but there's still a lot out there to be found unless silver skyrockets I can't see any major changing its production profile to scale back on copper and kick out more silver you would need to have a massive spike in the price and from a development standpoint how are you seeing developing a silver mine with the challenges on the supply side of the economy these days what do you see we're in a safe jurisdiction which really helps when we raised capital we told the broader story that we have a big silver vein we're going to put it in production as fast as we can so it wasn't so much about silver as it was the production story whether we were producing gold or nickel really didn't matter in this particular story it was the speedway to production that resonated with investors do you have any challenges in on the permitting minimal we had some but minimal all things considered you had issues with just the supply chain and getting the yes that you need yes that's an interesting story that we lost 70 days because we had a ship big shipping container it was lost somewhere in Long Beach they knew it was in Long Beach but they didn't know where in Long Beach of course that's the container with the motor the chain and a bunch of other stuff needed to make the ball mill actually turn so we lost 70 days of production to the supply chain issues the shipping used to be one dollar a mile now it's five welding rods were 60 bucks each now they're 300 so we're being affected by the supply chain yeah all mines will be all mines in the future will be certainly metal prices are rising all over fuel prices are rising perverting longer but you know so getting mines in production when we made the discovery to put in silver in San Jose from discovery hold to production probably three and a half years I think that now will be quite impossible in any country not in my country from discovery to production yeah so even at the importance of silver and some of the modern technologies are you still going to see governments you know increase in the permitting time and be more careful with them yeah I don't think they I don't think they put one and one together to get to know I mean you know the social issues the the anti-mining sentiment that's throughout Latin America mostly bought on by NGO groups Catholic Church Oxfam some of the some of the primary causes of that but in fairness some of the miners have been really crappy at ESG and the good guys wind up bearing the brunt of that in the form of increased permitting as a whole we need to be really good at ESG yeah I think most I think these days most companies are most companies are we're talking about a group of idiots who aren't drilling in Ontario without going to see First Nations yeah but you get there were always the odd one but for the most part most mining companies are very sensitive to ESG on the environmental side the very good things have improved significantly over the last decade or 15 years I believe in those areas yeah there's always the odd bowl how are you seeing things and where you're located well I was just going to say just just to add onto that is it's about education too and you know and we definitely are seeing a lot more you know public education about critical metals and their role in green energies but I think that's still very poorly understood by a lot of the environmental groups out there right there's always been a huge disconnect between you know where all these green energy technologies actually come from and how they're produced right right at mine so I think it's a combination of we we definitely as a whole have to be better at ESG you know like we discussed you know before governments and policy makers are going to start changing their ways and and allowing us to fast track permanent communities whenever you're working absolutely a bigger degree absolutely NSRs spread out all the way as opposed to central governments making sure they participate in the project from a very young stage they're involved in the exploration understanding and we have it relatively easy right American rare earths for example they have to explain rare earths all right I got this mountain I think I'm gonna get right at least we have silver people understand silver yeah and people need to understand that silver is actually used in you know solar panels and and electric vehicles I mean a lot of people know copper and cobalt and these sorts of things but you know that education is important and you know Chris to answer your question like our project is in Idaho and we've actually hired a group out of Boise that's helping us get introductions to the local stakeholders the local ranching association because you know coming from Canada coming from a foreign place you know we can't just expect to walk into a new project and we know everyone right so they're helping us build those relationships and things like that are important it's important to you know frame the narrative early that we're not here to destroy the environment we're here to build something we're here to create wealth create jobs and actually you know create pretty some metal that's good for the environment yeah and you got to choose your location oh absolutely I think one of the key takeoffs of what we're all discussing here is that in addition to the traditional up-down cyclicality of the mining industry for all sorts of business cycle reasons we're moving into an era where the whole the whole idea shifts upward in terms of difficulty everything it's tougher to do geology it's tougher to do exploration tougher for permits tougher for development tougher for supply chain tougher for financing ESG first nations and then of course the energy angle because you know what is mining mining is applied energy mining is electricity and diesel fuel applied to rocks in the ground and all of those things are going up in price and and it doesn't look like we're really going to see a a rebate backwards and labor price of labor is going up just on the demand side what i say what do you think is going to be the main driver for the silver demand in the near future well i i think the electronics industry in a broad sense is is is a big and growing user for these things i mean you know your iphone your the keyboard and your computer the laptops i mean all of those things the world is you know getting more and more electronic every day solar panels again use quite a bit of of silver and so the electronics are going to be driving it but then also there's that shadow monetary angle right as well you know when when the when the US government says oh inflation is 8.6 percent well yeah they what they really mean is it's 17 percent but they don't want to tell you that you know and so the the value of the dollar is going down even though the dollar is strengthening against other currencies but you know your money buys less you buy less gas you buy less food or it costs you more for the same amount and silver is going to ride that wave as well so between the electronics that make people's lives hopefully better and the monetary angle i mean i i see i see a rising floor for silver over time absolutely that has a reciprocal effect too right in what peter was saying you can't get ballmills right you can't get parts i mean how many new mines were supposed to come online that are probably stalled right now and you can't even get workers i mean the labor market participation rate is is incredibly low right now i mean i don't know if you guys are suffering from the same thing right now but i mean it's it's it's challenging just to find people to work you know and that's broader than silver right that's across the industry exactly exactly but that's that's hindering you know new silver mines from coming online at the moment and even current producing mines so i mean there's your you know supply just coming down even further right and on the demand type peter what do you see is driving the future of silver demand i haven't focused on that much but i know there's jewelry right batteries electronics and a warehouse of value there's a whole community that calls themselves uh the silver stackers or the silver backs and what they are are people who buy physical silver and stack it away because physical silver right now is around $40 an ounce to take delivery whereas paper silver is 2021-22 so it's a significant part of the silver market to take that physical silver right well i think we've had a pretty good discussion here today uh on the silver panel and i'd like to thank you all for your time and enjoy the rest of the show thank you please please