Three pointsJust wanted to make a few points today,
1) All that we are seeing in the paper silver price now is exactly what we see after every FOMC meeting. The authorities always smash it when Powell speaks, and they are especially never going to permit a rising gold or silver price to co-incide with an announcement that inflation is getting out of control. Nevertheless there are absolutely no fundamental changes in the case for silver. The pretext for smashing the price was that the Fed allegedly might raise rates to 0.25% at some time in 2023. But even if they did do this, it would not even make a dent in inflation. To kill inflation you would need to see substantially higher interest rates, a thing which can never be accomplished without crashing everything.
2) When it comes to Bayhorse specifically, we are in a vastly different situation now than we were in August 2020 when the silver price got smashed. I have estimated that well over $4 million must have come into the company by now by means of the February private placement plus the exercise of warrants. I have also pointed out that, with a sum like that, we could survive on last year’s burn rate for 16 months, or produce for over six months at 100 tpd and comfortably get into FCF. Bayhorse crashed after August 2020 because the share price was only going up in the first place on the hope that a higher silver price _might_ bring in the money to go into full-scale production. Now, we already have that money and there is no need to dilute again. We are also highly profitable at $26 or $25 silver, so this smash is of little concern to us specifically.
3) With respect to what hartadd is saying, we do know from history that in 1933/34, mining stocks were not confiscated in the USA even though physical bullion was. Now I dearly hope that the general public would resist any confiscation efforts of physical bullion also, lest we slip into utter poverty and tyranny. But nevertheless, the precedent is for bullion to get confiscated, not mining stocks. Canada (where Brandywine is located) has also never confiscated gold and silver miners.
Now, can mining stocks get confiscated—yes, certainly. Anything might happen and tyrants will violate private-property rights in whatever way they want. But my mindset is, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make wealth that will last for dozens of generations and I will not permit myself to lose it. I am willing to take the risk.
By the way, one way to allay fears of nationalization is to diversify jurisidictionally.