TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan’s largest precious metals retailer, Bank of Taiwan, has sold out of its silver bars as demand rises alongside gains in precious metals, UDN reported Thursday.
The bank’s 100-gram silver bars, produced by Swiss refiner Pamp, have been sold out since last month. New stock is not expected in the near term.
Silver and gold have both risen significantly, as investors view the metals as safe havens amid ongoing economic and financial uncertainty. In 2025, gold increased 64%, while silver rose 144% over the same period, according to Sinotrade and Yahoo Finance.
A senior precious metals manager at a local bank said that while gold’s growth reflects underlying market fundamentals, silver’s increase has been driven more by speculative trading. Silver is generally more volatile than gold and can fluctuate sharply, especially when gold prices fall.
The recent rally in precious metals eased Friday following US President Donald Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh as the next Federal Reserve chair, NBC reported. Investors interpreted the nomination as supportive of the dollar, contributing to the pullback in precious metals prices, according to PBS.
Aaron Klein, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, said Trump’s choice was intended to ease market concerns. Warsh, who served on the Fed Board of Governors from 2006 to 2011, has previously taken a hawkish stance on interest rates, showing reluctance to lower rates for fear of fueling inflation.
However, Warsh has recently expressed a more flexible view. In a November opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, he suggested that inflation is influenced by policy choices and recommended lowering rates.
Despite this, Evercore International Strategy and Investment Vice Chair Krishna Guha said the market was “trading Warsh hawkish.” Silver prices fell more than 30% in a single day, the largest one-day decline since 1980, while gold decreased over 10%.
After the pullback, silver remains over 150% higher and gold more than 70% higher compared with the same period last year. Besides physical silver, investors in Taiwan can also invest through silver savings accounts, silver-focused funds or exchange-traded funds, or silver contracts for difference, according to Mammon.
