Don't forget about one of the fastest growing applications of silver yet, solar panels. Panel manufacturers are huge consumers of silver and it's very unlikely it will ever be recovered once consumed.
Gold + Silver + BTC = solid investments. Diversify.
Silver being used in solar panels is use value, not exchange value. Silver is fast loosing its moneyness. I think the silver bugs are fooled by history in believing silver is good for smaller transactions. The main reason silver was used as money, was that some kings had access to silver mines, and no gold. Plus, they could sometimes extract value out of their population by declaring only silver as money, hoard the gold, then declare only gold to be money. Anyway the gold to silver ratio was sometimes pegged. For instance, the arabs fixed the value 6:1 for hundreds of years, profiting on the carry trade between europe and the east (while at the same time it was 12:1 in Europe). Things like this could not tick now.
Silver is goners as money.
Silver as money has been gone for a long time,but it is the second most used commodity in the world. Only Oil has more uses than Silver in the modern world. Its is daily needed right across the board.
PM have a lifespan of thousand of years, Fiats lifespan is centuries and bitcoins will be decades. You just need to look how fast the digital world moves. How much use would you have with a 486 machine in todays world? Well it was a mighty machine too.
I dare to say that Bitcoin cant even match a steam engine in terms of useful lifespan. A steam-engine was revolutionary and world changing on its day, but quickly outpaced. Today, enthusiast still operate steam engines in a hundred yeas no-one will use a bitcoin, not even enthusiasts.
