This week, the delivery and inventory game surrounding COMEX silver has suddenly come to the forefront. During a non-delivery month, physical delivery applications have reportedly surged abnormally, raising questions in the market about whether this long-standing futures system, viewed as the "pricing center," is still robust enough. Especially as silver has been indicated to have risen approximately 154% since 2025, and with the rapid warming of safe-haven sentiment for precious metals, this brewing delivery storm is seen by many participants as a critical turning point for the silver bull market and the global shift in risk appetite.

Non-Delivery Month Overwhelms Warehouses: A Signal of 40 Million Ounces

● The unusual starting point comes from the sudden amplification of delivery applications during a non-delivery month. According to a single source, the scale of January COMEX silver delivery applications has exceeded 40 million ounces, far higher than the typical 1-2 million ounces seen in previous years. Since this data is currently only available from a single channel and has not received broader official verification, the market has begun to reassess delivery and liquidity risks under "extreme scenarios" with a sense of skepticism.

● Accompanying the amplified discussion of application volume is the critical safety net of inventory. According to the same single source, the current registered inventory of COMEX silver is approximately 110-120 million ounces. When juxtaposing the delivery applications exceeding 40 million ounces with this inventory data, the delivery demand has clearly approached what many traders consider the "inventory safety boundary." Even though there is no official definition of a specific threshold, it is enough to trigger ongoing inquiries about warehouse arrangements and clearing capabilities.

● More intriguingly is the change in the delivery structure itself. Under traditional futures market logic, the vast majority of participants would choose to close or roll over contracts as expiration approaches, rather than actually taking physical delivery. However, the reportedly substantial delivery applications this time suggest that more and more funds are bypassing the financial layer's closing game, opting instead for measurable, tangible physical silver, which starkly contrasts with the previous habit of "rolling contracts with little delivery."

Inventory Crisis Rumors: From Scarcity to Delivery Pressure

● As delivery applications and inventory data are concentrated and amplified, the market has begun to circulate more aggressive projections. Some opinions claim that if March delivery demand ultimately expands to the 70-80 million ounces range, it could "consume" most or nearly all of the currently registered inventory. This assertion is currently classified as a pending verification viewpoint: lacking daily official inventory details and no authoritative institution providing corresponding stress tests, but in an emotionally sensitive environment, it is enough to act as a catalyst for the widespread dissemination of the "inventory crisis" narrative.

● What truly unsettles participants is not just the inventory numbers themselves, but the potential systemic consequences. If a future delivery window encounters an extreme situation where physical delivery cannot be fully satisfied, whether due to technical delays, inadequate warehouse allocation, or deeper liquidity gaps, the credibility of COMEX as the international silver pricing center will be directly questioned. The question of "if delivery issues arise, should the pricing system be rewritten" has begun to circulate among professional institutions and retail communities alike.

● Meanwhile, statements like "if a delivery default occurs, the credibility of COMEX pricing will suffer a severe blow" have also been frequently cited and amplified. It is important to emphasize that such judgments currently also belong to pending verification market voices, with no actual delivery default cases to correspond to, but in a public opinion environment where expectations and fears reinforce each other, it greatly expands investors' imagination of systemic risks, elevating what was originally a technical detail of inventory issues to a potential crisis in the global precious metals pricing governance structure.

Moment of Futures Price Distortion: Spot Prices Soar Away from Main Board

● While the disputes over delivery and inventory have yet to be settled, anomalies in pricing have added fuel to the tense emotions. According to a single source, the spot silver price reportedly reached an extreme quote of about $119.78 per ounce during trading, a level far above the price range presented by mainstream futures contracts, creating a glaring "isolated high point." Considering that this information is currently only available from a single channel and lacks official transaction details, the representativeness and repeatability of this quote remain in doubt.

● The sharp price difference has been interpreted by some traders as a liquidity crisis and a concentrated outbreak of "scrambling for physical" sentiment—meaning that with a limited number of deliverable contracts and warehouse receipts, marginal buyers are willing to raise prices to compete for immediately deliverable resources. However, the market has yet to obtain transparent data regarding the depth of matching, order book conditions, and whether the quotes were triggered by very small transaction volumes, making it difficult for outsiders to accurately judge whether this is a structural signal or a price spike under localized liquidity withdrawal.

● In the absence of intraday trends and more complete data, the narrative surrounding this spot price anomaly must be restrained. This article only describes it within the scope of "single source" and "intraday abnormal quotes," avoiding directly characterizing it as a historical extreme and not making additional projections about the underlying trading scale and intentions. This sense of boundary itself reflects that in an environment of high volatility and high uncertainty, the authenticity of data and interpretative frameworks are also part of the market game.

Silver Doubles in a Year: The Resonance of Hedging, Inflation, and Speculation

● The dramatic changes in price provide an emotional backdrop for all concerns regarding delivery and inventory. According to a single source, since 2025, silver has reportedly risen by as much as 154%, meaning that in less than a year, silver has not only experienced a surge far exceeding that of industrial metals but has also been repriced by more and more funds as a composite asset with both monetary and financial attributes. This identity switch has elevated its position in investment portfolios from "industrial hedging" to "quasi-currency chips."

● The steep upward curve reinforces a simple and intuitive judgment: in times of uncertainty regarding credit and liquidity, "holding physical assets is safer." As this expectation spreads among different types of funds, delivery demand rises, further pushing up optimistic bets on silver prices. The price increase triggers more deliveries, and the physical tightness provides further support for prices, thus forming a mutually reinforcing positive feedback loop between delivery and price, making every stir regarding inventory potentially amplify into a new round of volatility.

● In a broader macro context, the repeatedly oscillating inflation expectations and the difficulty in fully anchoring interest rate paths place silver in a delicate position: it is neither viewed as purely the ultimate safe haven like gold nor as a high-beta risk asset, but rather as a "middle-ground chip" between the two. For those concerned about the purchasing power of fiat currency but unwilling to dive into high-risk assets, silver is becoming a compromise choice, which just happens to provide the financial soil for this round of price surge and delivery storm.

From Gold to Bitcoin: The Echo of Precious Metal Bull Markets and On-Chain Assets

● The controversy surrounding silver delivery is not occurring in isolation within the corners of traditional markets but is embedded in a longer chain of asset migration. The launch of Ethereum tokenized shares by Hong Kong's Hang Seng Gold ETF is a landmark case of the deep integration of traditional precious metal allocation with public chain infrastructure. By issuing tokens anchored to gold ETFs on-chain, positions that previously existed only in the ledgers of brokers and custodians have first appeared on-chain in the form of programmable assets, opening a new entry channel for cross-border funds and crypto-native investors.

● At the same time, the Bitcoin fund issued by Switzerland's Sygnum has raised about 750 BTC in four months, indicating that some high-net-worth and institutional funds have begun to view gold, silver, and Bitcoin as different weights in the same safe-haven basket. In this asset allocation framework, gold or silver plays a more traditional role in value preservation, while Bitcoin is seen as a highly elastic hedge against sovereign currencies and the existing financial order, allowing the same funds to dynamically switch weights among the three to respond to different stages of macro shocks.

● As the risks of COMEX silver delivery are amplified and institutional trust is questioned, this multi-asset hedging framework has a realistic outlet. Some funds that harbor doubts about delivery and warehouse receipt rules may choose to "bypass" the traditional delivery system through tokenized gold, on-chain ETF certificates, or Bitcoin, shifting their hedging demand towards assets that do not rely on a single exchange's storage. This cross-asset migration not only reshapes the correlation between precious metals and digital assets but also means that every storm surrounding inventory and delivery may echo in the on-chain world.

If COMEX Loses Trust: The Chain Reaction from Silver to Crypto

The current silver delivery storm resembles a narrative stage of "inventory tightness—trust under pressure": the single-source disclosure of delivery applications and inventory data, aggressive projections about future delivery windows, and abnormal quotes in the spot market collectively form a tense expectation landscape. However, for it to truly evolve into a delivery default or systemic collapse event, we still need to observe subsequent disclosures of more authoritative official data, warehouse receipt allocations, and clearing arrangements, as well as whether mainstream institutions choose to vote with their feet.

If COMEX's credibility shows cracks during this process, the volatility logic of silver will also be rewritten: under higher risk premium demands, prices may enter a more intense, more gap-filled, and emotionally driven volatility cycle; at the same time, pricing power may have the opportunity to be redistributed among over-the-counter spot markets, regional exchanges, and on-chain assets, with global silver prices no longer dominated by a single center but rather relying more on multi-source quotes and cross-market arbitrage.

For the crypto market, this is not just a distant drama but a real-life lesson in "collateral and clearing": when a system centered on warehouse receipts and contracts encounters a trust shock, how collateral quality, delivery rules, and clearing order will be reassessed has a high degree of isomorphism with the clearing logic in the DeFi world. More importantly, if the precious metal bull market is further ignited in the delivery storm, and some hedging funds complete their migration through tokenized products and Bitcoin, then this event surrounding silver is likely to become one of the starting points for the resonance of the precious metal bull market and the digital asset bull market.

Join our community to discuss and grow stronger together!
Official Telegram community: https://t.me/aicoincn
AiCoin Chinese Twitter: https://x.com/AiCoinzh

OKX Benefits Group: https://aicoin.com/link/chat?cid=l61eM4owQ
Binance Benefits Group: https://aicoin.com/link/chat?cid=ynr7d1P6Z

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。