On June 11, a coalition of more than 40 companies and trade organizations from across the U.S. precious metals industry sent a letter to congressional leaders urging passage of the SILVER Act. Depositories, mints, dealers, refiners, miners, banks, insurers - every link in the chain signed on.

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The headline pitch is national security. The economics underneath is a de facto storage monopoly that has gone unchallenged for decades.

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You see, when a U.S. gold or silver futures contract settles with physical metal, that metal has to come out of an exchange-approved vault. For gold, the exchange rule is explicit: approved vaults must sit within a 150-mile radius of New York City. No written rule exists for silver, platinum, or palladium, but in practice, approvals haven't strayed beyond the same corridor. Just 11 facilities nationwide hold that approval, and not one of them sits in the Central, Mountain, or Pacific time zone.

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What the SILVER Act would actually do

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The SILVER Act - formally the System Integrity through Licensed Vault Expansion and Resilience Act - is filed as S. 4621 in the Senate and H.R. 8007 in the House. Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) sponsor the Senate bill, with Reps. Russ Fulcher (R-ID), Mark Harris (R-NC), and Susie Lee (D-NV) behind the House version.

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The bill would amend the Commodity Exchange Act to require clearing organizations to approve at least two qualified depositories in each of the four continental U.S. time zones. Clearing organizations are the entities that stand behind every futures trade. The bill also requires published, objective criteria and a formal application process for vaults that want in.

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It does not force approval of any specific vault. The coalition isn't asking Congress to build anything. It's asking Congress to open a door that has been closed for decades.

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The commercial logic is simple. The coalition says approved depositories currently charge the maximum storage fees the exchange permits, while qualified facilities in other regions could do the job for materially less. Western states like Nevada, Idaho, and Texas host much of America's mining, minting, and refining, yet their vaults can't touch the public futures market.

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Four months of coordinated pressure

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This letter didn't arrive in a vacuum. Take a look at the sequence:

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* March 2026: H.R. 8007 introduced in the House

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* April 2026: CFTC Chairman Michael Selig publicly praises the effort at a House Agriculture Committee hearing and offers to work with sponsors

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* May 21, 2026: the bipartisan Senate companion lands

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* June 11, 2026: a letter signed by more than 40 industry players hits congressional leaders' desks

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That's a pressure campaign building month by month, with the relevant regulator already leaning in. Vault geography doesn't usually attract bipartisan sponsors from Idaho and Nevada plus a friendly CFTC chairman in the span of four months.

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Worth noting: the coalition's supporters include publicly traded names like A-Mark Precious Metals (NASDAQ: AMRK) and First Majestic Silver (NYSE: AG), which tells you companies with real exchange exposure see commercial upside here, not just a political talking point.

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To be sure, the loudest voices have a direct stake in the outcome. Several coalition members operate depositories that would line up for approval the moment the rules change. And the incumbent clearing organization has resisted adding vaults outside the Northeast for decades. Most bills die in committee, no floor vote is scheduled, and even passage would only start a rulemaking process, not finish one.

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Still, market structure rarely gets this kind of organized, bipartisan attention. If you hold physical metal through a regional depository or an IRA storage program, this is the kind of slow-moving policy fight that could eventually lower your storage costs and deepen liquidity outside New York. Nothing here is a trade. It's a structural shift worth keeping on your radar.

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