What happens when a certain (financial) market is small and demand goes up ? Correct, the price of the commodity rises exponentially.

We steemsilvergold pirates are mainly looking for treasure in silver, gold and crypto currencies. So let us look at these three markets and expectations.

1. How big or small are each of the gold, silver and crypto market ?

GOLD
There is just slightly more than 6 billion troy ounces of gold above ground amongst human beings mostly in jewelry (approximately 50%), followed by .999 fine bullion form (approx. 40%, half of which is held by governments).
** VALUE = 7,8 trillion USD**

SILVER
With available data it is conservative to estimate that there is about 4 billion ounces of silver bullion in .999 silver bullion form being held by investors throughout the world.
VALUE = 62 billion USD . Other sources even arrive lower value.

source

CRYPTO
Crypto market cap value is some 138 billion USD with Bitcoin taking up some 52% of this.
VALUE 138 billion USD

Please be aware that silver is also mined for industrial purposes and this silver get's lost again unlike gold. So far annual demand has been met by new mining each year.

2 Is this small or big ?

Well that is easy to answer. Silver and crypto and even the much larger gold market is tiny compared to the overall investment market that invests in bonds, treasuries, cash, equity and real estate etc etc .
Check the GOLD balloon on the bottom right of this figure.

3. So what will happen next ?

(in my opinion)

I think gold markets function as a safe harbour in difficult times and demand could go up in times of turmoil increasing the value but normally demand is pretty stable and the availability of the metal continues to be limited. So good to preserve wealth.

For silver the market is much smaller and a small increase in demand not followed by an even large increase in supply could trigger a quick rise in price of silver. So for speculation silver is a good asset class with low downside risk as the availability like with gold is limited. Issues in one of the larger mining countries could double the price in an instant. HODL!

For crypto the story is even better. The market is very small still and demand can rise easily and new crypto is limited so price can go up a lot. If the big public steps in and investors follow : the prices will rise and rise . HODL!

Goldrooster