Silver’s Value Plummets 25% in Hours: The Crushing Blow to Small Savers and Financial System Hypocrisy

Original article: La ilusión de la plata se rompió en horas: el golpe a los pequeños ahorrantes tras el desplome del 25 % y la hipocresía del sistema

In just a single day – within a few hours – the value of silver plummeted by over 25%. When an asset heavily promoted by global financial media drops 25% in one session, it’s not merely a «correction»; it is a case of extreme liquidity.

By Bruno Sommer

Speculations trying to explain this collapse, suggesting that the potential successor to Jerome Powell at the Federal Reserve would be Kevin Warsh, form part of the narrative conspired in the aftermath of the crash.

Thursday, January 29, 2026, will be remembered as the day silver, in a rally that seemed unstoppable, reached – for instance, in its ETF SLV – a value of $108.9 before dramatically crashing within hours.

Grandparents and those advised by their account managers to invest their savings in gold and silver-linked stocks were left uninformed about the impending fall.

In fact, many investment platforms in Chile experienced significant delays in reporting the losses occurring, and executing sell orders took longer than anticipated.

The events confirm that the price was sustained almost exclusively by expectation, leveraging, and a constant flow of new money from the unsuspecting: a classic bubble.

The major players – the same ones promoting the asset – began to sell at record speeds, triggering panic.

The asymmetry of information meant that small investors, who bought believing they were «saving» or «securing» themselves, were the last to know and therefore suffered the most losses.

While large operators have access to tools like automatic stop loss orders, many investment platforms in Chile do not offer these basic options, which allow for automatic selling when an asset reaches a certain level of loss.

What has occurred is a brutal transfer of wealth and a profound breakdown of trust. The system promoted the asset, overheated it, and then let it fall, abandoning retail investors who had been induced to «save» in this instrument, now facing substantial losses.

The financial system once again unabashedly showcases its hypocrisy and amorality.

On one hand, it regulates and protects traditional savings – bank deposits – knowing they are the foundation for social stability.
On the other hand, it enables and even encourages high-risk products – stocks, cryptocurrencies, and highly volatile commodities – to be sold en masse as if they are the new form of «smart saving» or «inflation protection,» without offering the same guarantees and, in many cases, with deeply asymmetric information.

It would be interesting to track where the mass selling initiated; whether in New York, London, or Shanghai, those looking for liquidity and to «screw over» those who had placed their trust in the metal in recent months.

All signs point to the Western money masters, who, frightened by the dollar’s weakness, are seeking its strengthening.

A 25% collapse in a single day of a heavily promoted asset is definitive proof that it was never a safe saving vehicle for the uninformed population.

The line between protected savings and promoted speculation is becoming increasingly thin, and it is the small investors who pay the price when that line is erased.