Are the powers that be trying to crush this silver spike? Let's explore!

I just watched an interesting video, shared by @kerrislravenhill. See here
It's a little alarmist, but is it wrong?
If you’ve been stacking silver for any length of time, you’ve seen this pattern before. Silver starts running hot, momentum builds, and then, right on cue... the price gets slammed. It seems to happen every single time! This time, the culprit being blamed is the COMEX, after it announced a 10% increase in margin requirements on silver futures.
To many stackers, this feels like classic price manipulation. Raise margins at the peak, force leveraged traders to sell, and watch the price drop. And to be fair, the result is completely predictable: weaker hands get flushed out, paper selling accelerates, and silver drops a few dollars in a hurry.
But here’s where the story gets a little more nuanced.
“Manipulation” can mean different things. There’s illegal manipulation: spoofing, fraud, coördinated deception. And then there’s something more structural: rule changes that are technically legal but have very clear market effects. Margin hikes don’t create more silver, and they don’t suddenly erase physical demand. What they do is make leverage more expensive, which cools speculative rallies fast. That's what happened here.
That's really the thing. That distinction matters, especially for stackers. These moves hit paper silver hardest. Physical silver doesn’t magically become more plentiful because futures traders need more collateral. If anything, the repeated disconnect between paper price volatility and physical reality is exactly why so many people stack in the first place.
So is this price manipulation? Or is it a risk-control system that just happens to knock the wind out of silver rallies every time they get interesting?
Maybe it’s a bit of both.
But the thing is, it may not matter, Silver is on a rally and even this may not stop it. It slowed it a bit, but I bet we still hit $70 before Xmas.
Either way, the pattern keeps repeating — meanwhile we just keep stacking.
But I don't know, maybe I'm trying too hard to be rational and I'm missing the obvious. What do you think?
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David is an American teacher and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Bluesky. |

