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Silver, BRICS, COMEX and the 90 minute trading halt ... and why you should care

This is sort of a companion article to another one of my articles, A perfect storm: The explosion in the silver market, the consequences for the U.S. economy and a potential escape hatch for us peons, so if you haven't read it, i suggest you do.

Yesterday, February 25, 2026, CME halted trading for metals and natural gas for 90 minutes claiming they were experiencing a "technical problem". This has happened at least twice before. What really happened yesterday appears to be far more sinister.

I really appreciate those of you that read 12bytes.org and so i wanted to reach out to you in a more personal way, that being with information that can help you financially and it is simply this: If you're not yet invested in gold or silver, now is the time to consider doing so. From everything i'm hearing, a very real potential exists to substantially expand your wealth in a short period of time. If you think investing in metal is somehow complex, it is not, not at all. Simply check the spot price for silver or gold, then drop by your local coin shop and buy what you can afford, making sure that the premium they charge isn't excessive. I would suggest paying cash to a local dealer rather than buying on-line, however if there are no local dealers in your area, then i'd suggest breaking out your credit card and visiting Battalion Metals since they are a very fair metals dealer that doesn't over-charge.

What the CME did yesterday appears to be criminal, yet i don't expect there will be any FTC investigation. While trading was "halted" by the CME for 90 minutes, it appears that 31,828 March silver contracts changed hands in backroom deals and the price of silver dropped $3/oz. as a result. COMEX, the metal commodity exchange division of the CME, does not appear to hold enough physical silver to satisfy the demand and so it seems they halted trading at a critical time, then offered cash settlements to investors rather than physical silver and apparently 31,828 investors went for the deal while 10,526 did not. I would assume the latter are electronics manufacturers or defense contractors that require silver for manufacturing. To understand more about what happened and the potential reasons why, i refer you to the following:

I'm not going to go into great detail as to why investing in gold and/or silver at this time appears to be a super-smart move. Again, read my earlier article to understand why that is, but here's some of the primary reasons:

  • The demand for silver is rising exponentially (it's required for data centers, electronics, solar panels, EV batteries, missiles, etc.), however the miners cannot meet the demand and haven't been able to do so for the last 5-6 years.
  • No other metal has the combination of properties required for electronics that silver has, they being electrical conductivity, heat dissipation and corrosion resistance. Without silver, our modern way of life ends (and frankly, that might be a good thing).
  • Most of the easily recoverable silver has already been mined. Most new silve is a byproduct of other mining.
  • As the U.S. recently did, countries are recognizing silver as being critical to national security.
  • Silver stockpiles in the U.S. (COMEX, etc.) are being drained, in part because China is paying more for silver than what COMEX is valuing it at. This is occurring at a critical time when the U.S. is investing billions of dollars in new data centers to house AI, a technology which some suspect will be dominated by China.

All of the above, and especially the first point, indicates that silver, the value of which has been kept artificially low for ~100 years, is on the cusp of exploding. The investment banks and the CME are criminally manipulating the market in order to keep the price of silver below $90-100/oz. because the banks are in big trouble if silver exceeds that and remains there. Silver already reached ~$120/oz. in January after which it crashed to around $65/oz.. The problem is that the banks cannot keep this up much longer. The BRICS members are developing their own economy to compete with the U.S. dollar. China is on a path to promoting its currency as the new global reserve currency. India is monetizing silver. Confidence is quickly waning in the dollar and COMEX. Most importantly however, regarding the short-term value of silver, is the supply and demand problem; demand continues to increase, yet the miners cannot keep up and this is likely going to drive silver to the 3-digit mark in the very near future. Conservative projections put silver at around $120/oz. by mid summer while others project it's value to reach $250-400 dollars per ounce before the end of 2026, so you see the potential opportunity that exists here. Silver seems to track gold, so gold is also a potentially wise investment.

Unlike most others, i'm not selling anything here. I simply want to inform my readers about the knowledge i've been acquiring over the last couple of months. I am by no means an expert in finance, but i can understand the basics and what it means when the supply of a commodity cannot satisfy demand. Take it for what it's worth and do your own research, but it's mighty hard for me to imagine how anyone could go wrong by buying some silver or gold.