The Albany Gazette - Silver Is the Supply Chain Vulnerability the World Should Be Most Worried About

Silver.

Not because it is unimportant. Because it has been taken for granted. Treated as a familiar input that feels benign, plentiful, and low-risk. The kind of material everyone assumes is already handled.

That assumption is wrong.

Silver represents one of the most significant and least examined vulnerabilities moving through modern supply chains today.

The Metal That Touches Everything and Slips Through the Cracks

Silver is certainly not a niche commodity. It does not sit quietly in vaults or move through narrow, controlled channels. It behaves like a utility and is embedded in nearly everything modern economies produce.

Electronics. Energy systems. Medical devices. Industrial equipment. Communications infrastructure. Defense hardware.

If it turns on, transmits, stores, senses, or connects, silver is almost certainly inside it.

That ubiquity makes silver indispensable. It also makes it dangerous when visibility fails. A material this widespread, moving this fast, without a persistent identity, creates blind spots that scale. And blind spots at scale do not stay benign for long.

The Most Important Metal No One Tracks Properly

Silver occupies a rare position in global supply chains. It is both precious and industrial. Valuable enough to matter, common enough to move continuously. It is melted, blended, reused, recycled, and redeployed over and over again. Each transformation strips away traditional forms of traceability.

For decades, the system compensated with paperwork. Declarations. Certificates. Estimates. Assumptions layered on top of assumptions. That approach was fragile even when silver prices were low.

With silver pushing into the ATH price territory, the cost of uncertainty has changed dramatically. Not purely from a financial perspective, but from a defense one as well.

When silver loses its provenance, supply chains lose visibility at the exact point where precision matters most. In electronics, especially, even small misrepresentations can cascade quickly. Components fail. Compliance gaps emerge. Entire product lines can be exposed.

Silver is not where supply chains break quietly. It is where vulnerabilities surface first.

Why Silver Exposes Systemic Risk Faster Than Anything Else

Most materials can hide inefficiency for years. Silver cannot. It moves too quickly and touches too many sectors. When sourcing is unclear, recycled content is overstated, or custody is obscured, silver reveals the problem earlier than plastics, earlier than gold, earlier than specialty metals.

That is why silver functions as a stress test for modern supply chains.

If a system cannot prove silver, it cannot prove anything.

SMX recognized this dynamic early. Rather than treating silver as a footnote to precious metals programs, the company approached it as a verification challenge that demanded material-level identity. The result is trueSilver, SMX's framework for embedding invisible molecular markers directly into silver so it can carry its identity through melting, reprocessing, reuse, and recycling.

Under trueSilver, silver no longer depends on documents to explain itself. The metal becomes the record.

From Overlooked to Infrastructure-Critical

This shift extends far beyond sustainability narratives. Silver's role in electronics alone makes it infrastructure-critical. As supply chains grow more complex and regulatory scrutiny intensifies, the inability to verify silver becomes a structural risk, not an accounting issue.

This is where SMX's broader platform comes into focus. The same molecular identity layer that has proven effective across plastics, textiles, hardware, and rare earths applies cleanly to silver. The difference is urgency.

Silver does not tolerate ambiguity for long.

By giving silver a persistent identity, SMX closes one of the most exposed gaps in modern manufacturing. Verification becomes automatic. Audits become factual. Disputes lose oxygen. And critically, materials that once flowed anonymously through global systems become far harder to misuse, misrepresent, or divert for unintended purposes.

DMCC and the Path to Integration

Silver does not move in isolation. It moves through global trade networks that demand trust at scale. With its expanding presence in international verification frameworks, including engagement through hubs such as DMCC, SMX is already positioning silver for integration into a broader ecosystem of authenticated materials.

As silver pricing tightens and demand accelerates across electronics and advanced manufacturing, that integration becomes inevitable. The question is not whether silver will need verification. The question is whether the infrastructure will be ready when the pressure arrives.

SMX's approach suggests preparation is already underway.

Proof Is the Difference Between Stability and Disruption

Silver's recent price action has refocused attention on its value. Its role in electronics underscores its necessity. Together, those forces expose a truth that supply chains can no longer ignore.

Materials this critical cannot rely on trust alone.

Silver has been overlooked in the public narrative, not because it is secondary, but because it is foundational. And foundational materials have a habit of disappearing into systems until something breaks.

SMX's work brings silver back into view, not as a commodity to be debated, but as a system to be verified. At a time when proof is becoming the baseline, that distinction matters. Not just for sustainability or compliance, but for security.

Because bad actors exist. And where supply chain vulnerabilities can be exploited, they eventually will be.

Silver without a verifiable record of where it came from and where it has been is one of those vulnerabilities. Not because its composition can be altered or its physical integrity compromised, but because its value can be. Untracked silver can move, change hands, and generate millions of dollars outside transparent systems. That is where risk accumulates. And worse, unleashed.

That is the problem. And it is one SMX, alongside its partners, takes very seriously.

About SMX

As global businesses face new and complex challenges relating to carbon neutrality and meeting new governmental and regional regulations and standards, SMX is able to offer players along the value chain access to its marking, tracking, measuring and digital platform technology to transition more successfully to a low-carbon economy.

Forward-Looking Statements

The information in this press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding expectations, hopes, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future. In addition, any statements that refer to projections, forecasts or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward-looking statements. The words "anticipate," "believe," "contemplate," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intends," "may," "will," "might," "plan," "possible," "potential," "predict," "project," "should," "would" and similar expressions may identify forward-looking statements, but the absence of these words does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking. Forward-looking statements in this press release may include, for example: matters relating to the Company's fight against abusive and possibly illegal trading tactics against the Company's stock; successful launch and implementation of SMX's joint projects with manufacturers and other supply chain participants of gold, steel, rubber and other materials; changes in SMX's strategy, future operations, financial position, estimated revenues and losses, projected costs, prospects and plans; SMX's ability to develop and launch new products and services, including its planned Plastic Cycle Token; SMX's ability to successfully and efficiently integrate future expansion plans and opportunities; SMX's ability to grow its business in a cost-effective manner; SMX's product development timeline and estimated research and development costs; the implementation, market acceptance and success of SMX's business model; developments and projections relating to SMX's competitors and industry; and SMX's approach and goals with respect to technology. These forward-looking statements are based on information available as of the date of this press release, and current expectations, forecasts and assumptions, and involve a number of judgments, risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing views as of any subsequent date, and no obligation is undertaken to update forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date they were made, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. As a result of a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties, actual results or performance may be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Some factors that could cause actual results to differ include: the ability to maintain the listing of the Company's shares on Nasdaq; changes in applicable laws or regulations; any lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on SMX's business; the ability to implement business plans, forecasts, and other expectations, and identify and realize additional opportunities; the risk of downturns and the possibility of rapid change in the highly competitive industry in which SMX operates; the risk that SMX and its current and future collaborators are unable to successfully develop and commercialize SMX's products or services, or experience significant delays in doing so; the risk that the Company may never achieve or sustain profitability; the risk that the Company will need to raise additional capital to execute its business plan, which may not be available on acceptable terms or at all; the risk that the Company experiences difficulties in managing its growth and expanding operations; the risk that third-party suppliers and manufacturers are not able to fully and timely meet their obligations; the risk that SMX is unable to secure or protect its intellectual property; the possibility that SMX may be adversely affected by other economic, business, and/or competitive factors; and other risks and uncertainties described in SMX's filings from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

EMAIL: [email protected]

SOURCE: SMX (Security Matters) Public Limited

View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire

(A.Thompson--TAG)