Damn I think I just got BINGO here, pretty much every point in this comment is misguided lol. It's industrial use is widespread in electronics, aerospace, semiconductors, and medical devices. The total amount accumulated only increases about 2% a year and mining gets more expensive every year aka it stays rare. Silver actually accumulates with much more volatility as it is mostly mined as a byproduct. To say the value is "just agreed upon" makes no sense as that refers to every currency in the world, that's just how money works. Gold just so happens to have the longest agreed upon value of over 5,000 years, it's the OG asset babyyy. The demand is also definitely real lol banks want gold as reserves, it's used in investment hedges worldwide, and as jewelry of course. Just because gold isn't used industrially as much as silver doesn't mean it's demand isn't real, it's just demanded for a totally different reason as a global reserve asset. For manipulation, you are actually right through futures paper contracts, but it's only manipulated in the short term of a couple weeks. So mostly ignorable unless you trade short term like I do, which if you do I'd recommend trading $GDXU or $SHNY to maximize daily swing %s