The Emerging Reddit Movement Determined to Move the Market: WallStreetSilver

It may be hard to believe, but it was just over a month ago that Reddit group WallStreetBets made headlines, getting on the radar of prominent institutional investors and challenging the status quo. The movement represented a turning point for financial markets globally; it revealed the power of the internet to make noise, even in the most traditional of avenues: the stock exchange. 

The WallStreetBets community has grown since late January, going from two million contributors to over nine million today. While the group has experienced censorship and regulation, hindering their ability to make major moves in markets, it appears it has also inflicted some of that censorship upon others. And so, others have stepped up to take matters into their own hands: enter WallStreetSilver.

Move over, WallStreetBets: WallStreetSilver is on a mission

The subreddit r/WallStreetSilver was created on January 29th, 2021, just one day after the GameStop short squeeze prompted new-age trading platforms like Robinhood to halt purchases of stocks targeted by the WallStreetBets movement. Since its founding, the Reddit group has amassed over 45,000 “silverbacks” — a term used to denote group members but also used in reference to mountain gorillas (another term the group proudly claims). 

The founder of WallStreetSilver, Ivan Bayoukhi, said in an interview with LODEpay Media that he created the subreddit to give silver advocates a platform to be heard. He stated that while the WallStreetBets subreddit was previously open to posts about silver as an investment, after the GameStop short squeeze made headlines, the sentiment moved away from silver. Now, contributors to the WallStreetBets subreddit are reportedly banned for posting about the precious metal. 

Bayoukhi noted that the real goal of the community is to “wake up the masses to the truth”: that in a world so saturated by fakeness – whether fake news, fake politics, or even fake food – people need to be actively engaged in finding what is “real.” Silver, he argued, is real wealth when compared to the fiat currencies that are backed by nothing but debt. 

The community has organized in pursuit of a mission to increase silver awareness, with a GoFundMe campaign recently launched to fund billboard advertising for the metal (see the hypothetical design from a WallStreetSilver user above). The campaign surpassed its goal of $100,000, with $113,477 at the time of writing. Above all, the creator said, the movement represents a “revolution for the people,” and the fundraising initiative is symbolic of the community’s effort to bring awareness to the masses. 

How technology is helping silver stackers through a potential shortage

With an attempted silver short squeeze in February, demand in the metal inched higher, a trend that had roots earlier in the year as bullion dealers, including the U.S. Mint, struggled to keep up with orders. According to an article from The Guardian, the “sales of US gold bullion coins rose 258% last year while silver coin demand was up 28%.” The depleting silver supply has recently been a concern for many silver advocates (not just those on WallStreetSilver), who have stacked up on their holdings accordingly. 

Its not just redditors on WallStreetSilver seeing more investors seek alternative avenues to enter the precious metals market. Aside from the metals-backed PSLV, blockchain-based initiatives are blending the old with the new, emerging as attractive vehicles as cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum experience bull runs. However, as Bayoukhi noted, investors must be wary of the credibility of these projects and ensure that their digital assets are truly representative of the physical metals, and redeemable for them at any time.  

The LODE Project has recognized this reluctance, striving to achieve full accountability to provide its community with peace of mind. For that reason, each of LODE’s digital silver tokens – the AGX Coin – is representative of a one-gram weight of vaulted, audited, insured, and verifiable investment-grade silver bullion. Not only does LODE provide a means to enter the silver market suitable for the digital age, but it also enables people to spend their digital silver – and digital gold (AUX Coin) – virtually anywhere, with its LODEpay Wallet application, currently available on Google Play and the App Store.

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(Featured image via Piqsels)

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