Silver Below $70 on Jobs Report, Tokenized Silver KAG
Silver broke a key handle on Friday. Silver prices fell below $70 per ounce, reaching their lowest level since late March and heading for a weekly decline of over 7%, as a stronger-than-expected US jobs report and ongoing Middle East uncertainty kept inflation and interest rate concerns in focus. The driver was the labor print. The May jobs report showed the US economy added 172,000 jobs, far exceeding the forecasted 85,000, while the unemployment rate remained at 4.3% and annual wage growth eased to 3.4%. This led investors to bet on a Federal Reserve interest rate hike, with markets pricing in a quarter-point increase by year-end.
The mechanism is straightforward: a hotter labor market lifts the path of real rates, and higher real rates raise the opportunity cost of holding a non-yielding metal. Gold moved in lockstep, gold prices dropped below $4,370 per ounce on Friday, reaching their lowest level of 2026. Silver, with its larger industrial demand component and thinner liquidity, simply moved further and faster.
The physical reality: registered metal is growing, not vanishing
Here is the nuance the price tape obscures. The COMEX delivery story this cycle is not depletion, it is the opposite. The June 1 COMEX inventory report showed combined silver stocks rising by approximately 4.8 million ounces since the May 21 reading. That brings total reported COMEX stocks to roughly 318.7 million ounces: 84.6 million in the registered category as metal pledged for delivery, and 234.1 million held to exchange storage standards but unpledged in the eligible category.
Critically, this build was real, not statistical. The denominator (paper open interest) has been essentially flat, and the numerator, registered metal, grew by nearly 3 million ounces. Real silver is being designated as deliverable. The bulk of the registered growth between May 21 and June 1 occurred in the trading days leading up to First Notice Day, consistent with depositories repositioning eligible metal into the registered category to satisfy expected delivery demand.
That said, the structural backdrop remains tight. 762 million ounces have been drawn from above-ground stocks across five straight deficit years, per the World Silver Survey 2026, and the 2026 projected shortfall is 46.3 million ounces, the sixth in a row. Speculative positioning, meanwhile, kept deleveraging: the most recent CFTC Commitments of Traders report shows non-commercial accounts running a net long of approximately 22,200 contracts, down from 24,700 contracts the prior week.
The read: paper got lighter while physical showed up. If registered metal holds above the ~84 million-ounce mark and the coverage ratio stabilizes, the acute-stress narrative cools. If registered metal reverses lower into the July contract while open interest rebuilds, the tightness story re-engages. The swing variable is Fed posture, whether the December hike that markets are now pricing actually materializes.
The RWTS angle on tokenized silver
For allocators who want silver without the storage and assay friction, tokenization offers allocated, audited ounces on-chain. We rate these products on custody, attestation, redemption, and counterparty quality, not on price direction.
In the tokenized silver category, the highest-rated product is KAG, Kinesis Silver, which carries a Trust Score of T1 (97/100). Each KAG represents one ounce of allocated, vaulted silver, redeemable for the underlying metal. Its sister token KAU, Kinesis Gold, holds the same T1 (97/100) score on the gold side. To be precise about what that score means: KAG is the highest-rated tokenized silver product, not the largest by market value, the broader tokenized metals market still skews toward gold tokens with larger circulating supply but lower scores. Current KAG and KAU circulation is published live on the Kinesis explorer at explorer.kinesis.money (figures as of 2026-06-06).
The distinction between a tokenized allocated holding and a COMEX warehouse warrant matters for anyone reading these inventory reports. Physical silver (coins, bars, allocated vault storage) sits entirely outside the COMEX numbers. A token like KAG represents a specific, audited allocated ounce; it is not a claim against the deliverable pool whose coverage ratio analysts watch. For how we weigh attestation cadence, vault custody, and redemption rights, see our Trust Score methodology.
Allocators comparing tokenized silver against the largest paper-silver vehicle should read our prior work, Tokenized Silver: KAG vs SLV Allocated Bullion Comparison, which breaks down where allocated tokenization diverges from an ETF structure. For the full category landscape and live scores, the tokenized silver hub is the anchor.
What to watch next
Three inputs frame the week ahead. First, the next COMEX warehouse reports, does registered metal hold above 84 million ounces, or roll back as the July cycle approaches? Second, the Fed dot-plot and December rate-hike odds, which set the real-rate path that pressured both metals on Friday. Third, the Middle East ceasefire track, which remains a genuine wildcard for safe-haven demand.
If silver stabilizes in the high-$60s to low-$70s and registered inventory holds, the structural-deficit thesis stays intact through near-term price weakness. Below the recent intraday lows, with registered metal still building, the story becomes a cleaner macro-rates trade and less a physical-scarcity one.
RWTS isn't bullish or bearish on silver, gold, or any token. We're the credit-rating agency for tokenized real assets. We rate. You decide.
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