The international precious metals market remained hot at the end of the year, with spot silver prices continuing to climb, breaking historical records for several consecutive days and becoming the biggest highlight of the commodities market in 2025. On December 27, spot silver prices broke through $76 per ounce, once again setting a new historical high, with a year-to-date increase of 160%; New York COMEX silver futures also performed strongly, with the main contract surging 7% intraday, also rewriting historical highs.
Silver rises to become the world's third largest asset.
As silver prices have repeatedly hit new highs, its global market capitalization has exceeded $4.2 trillion and is approaching $4.3 trillion, surpassing tech giant Apple (market capitalization of approximately $4.076 trillion) to become the world's third largest asset, second only to gold (approximately $31 trillion) and Nvidia (approximately $4.6 trillion).
Analysts: Gold and silver still have room to rise next year
The main reasons for silver's strong rise this year include several factors: First, the global supply-demand imbalance continues to widen, with the silver deficit estimated to exceed 200 million ounces by 2025, and inventories continuing to tighten; second, industrial demand has exploded, with a significant increase in silver consumption in fields such as photovoltaic solar energy, electric vehicles, AI data centers, and semiconductors; in addition, expectations of interest rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve, geopolitical tensions, a weakening dollar, and silver's inclusion in the US critical mineral list have all attracted a large influx of investment and safe-haven funds.
Since the beginning of the year, silver has risen from around $30, accumulating a gain of over 160%. While gold's 80% increase is also noteworthy, it pales in comparison. In response to the recent market situation of continued rises in gold and silver, but a sustained pullback in Bitcoin, Ramnivas Mundada, Director of Economic and Corporate Research at GlobalData, points out that this is not simply a safe-haven rally, but rather a deeper structural shift. He believes the international monetary system is gradually moving from a dollar-centric unipolar structure towards a more multipolar one. According to his forecast, by 2026, gold prices still have room to rise by 8% to 15%, while silver could see gains of 20% to 35%.
It's also worth mentioning that Robert Kiyosaki, author of "Rich Dad Poor Dad," boldly predicted in November that silver would rise to $100 or even higher by 2026. He believes that silver still has huge potential driven by currency devaluation and industrial demand.
