The world keeps demanding more high-tech electronics, but consumer recycling efforts have not kept up with the pace of demand for these products. The UN warned that less than 25% of E-Waste is recycled globally. The growth of consumer electronics has significantly impacted the supply of silver. The impact is not that any one product uses a lot of silver, but small increments of silver used that has compounded overtime.
A good example of this is with graphics processing units (GPUs) which have been on the market since late 1999 and are now used for a variety of applications from gaming to Ai, even cryptocurrency mining. We've approximated that over 5 billion of these components have been created based on Jon Peddie Research, and Annual Shipments data in various reports from the two leading manufacturers; AMD and Nvidia. On average about 200 million GPUs are created annually, and with new efforts towards Ai scaling, its expected to rise in the near future.
The application of gold, silver and platinum group metals into electronics amount to around 10% and they are generally concentrated into some components (mainly PCBs, switches, relays and connectors). The richness of precious metals varies depending how well made the GPUs is. We can approximate a conservative average amount of silver used of between 1.5-3.6 grams. If none of these GPUs were ever recycled, the amount of silver not recovered could be anywhere from 240m to 570m+ troy ounces. If only 25% were recycled, then between 180m-430m+ troy ounces has still yet to be recycled and more concerning is the location of this silver is currently unknown.
Most consumers today are unaware of how their stuff gets made, let alone how much critical silver makes up their electronics. Even with free recycling programs available, the effort has failed to attract the consumers to part ways with most of their tech. Both Alianza Recycling and PIRG indicate that alarmingly less than 20% of Americans recycle their E-Waste.
Can you imagine how many LCD TVs or Monitors have been manufactured?
A little bit of silver goes into every one. According to research conducted by the European Union, the average electronic display contains between 0.48 grams to 0.84 grams of silver. The average amount of silver recovered from recycling varies depending on the sorting method, with higher recoverability favoring manual sorting. Its impossible to fully account for all monitors created due to the large and ever changing list of manufacturers; however, estimates places the amount in the several billions.
Little bits add up.
The global electronics industry consumes thousands of tons of solder annually, with lead-free solder (containing silver, tin, and copper) becoming the standard due the EU's RoHS directive which mandated the phasing out of lead in electronics because of health and environmental concerns. Lead released from discarded electronics can contaminate soil and ground water, which among other concerns drove the need for this restriction, which was established in 2003.
The global economy is entering a new era where Ai is driving growth again in the tech sector and even more high-end computer hardware is demanding not just silver for its high electrical conductivity, but also for its superior thermal conductivity too.
Ai infrastructure comprises of Central Processing Units (CPUs), Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), Neural-Performance Memory and Storage, and various types of Networking Equipment. The common element between all these pieces of hardware is the requirement of silver.
Announced recently, The Stargate Project is a new company that intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new Ai infrastructure for OpenAi in the United States, with $100 billion being deployed immediately. This project aims to help reindustrialize the United States, generate global economic growth and provide a strategic military advantage to protect the national security of the US and its allies.
The USA may have a lot of Ai ground to cover to compete with China's aim for world dominance. Chinese DeepSeek has been recently unveiled to be on par with Chat GPT's best models and at a fraction of the cost.
In an interview from CNBC, Scale AI founder and CEO Alexandr Wang said he believes that DeepSeek has significantly more GPUs than is expected, potentially 50,000 H100 GPUs (an Ai chip from Nvidia), which he said they cannot talk about because of the export controls that the US has put in place. If this is true, its would be clear that US export controls have not been effective at mitigating Chinese Ai advancement. Nvidia currently outsources its chip manufacturing to places like Taiwan and South Korea, which may pose to be a perpetual security risk as tensions between Taiwan and China continue to escalate towards what seems like an inevitable Chinese invasion. Such a move would have dire effects on the US economy and future supply Ai hardware.
Wang described the artificial intelligence race between the U.S. and China as an “AI war.”
Reliance on foreign manufacturing has put the US at risk of being overtaken by China. Over-reliance of foreign sources of critical resources will oppose US supremacy until new friendly sources become available.
SILVERWARS
Additionally, the Ai race will come at a planetary cost. Gold, Silver and Platinum group of metals are generally considered to be the most concern for almost all the Impact Categories according to European Commission Joint Research Centre's Institute for Environment and Sustainability. This grave reality may paved the way for landfills to become new sources of precious metals as the prices rise, but at current prices this option remains infeasible.
Additionally late last week, Founder and CEO of Scottsdale Mint Joshua Phair came out Thursday to sound the alarm that production of new silver supply is backed up more than 3 months.
Silver Refineries in the US are backed up more than 3 Months!!! They are processing so much material into Comex Good Delivery (on behalf of the banks) that industrial consumption is having issues finding reasonably priced physical Silver.
— Josh Philip Phair (@JoshPhilipPhair) January 23, 2025
*Retail investors are generally unaware…
Our own sources have informed us that wholesalers are delayed delivering 1000 ounce bars by 2 weeks as of Friday (24th).
The Chinese stranglehold on silver may be starting to manifest itself in the availability of the silver supply for US industries that rely on it. Is the mad dash we predicted happening? Will banks play favorites as to who gets the silver?
Are the fears of the US placing tariffs on China then China turning around and blocking export of critical materials to the USA, starting to be a concern?
We will continue to follow this story and report on developments.
(Sources Below)
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