If you want the upside potential of Bitcoin with minimal downside risk, then silver may well be your answer.

The precious metal has offered not just centuries, but millennia of intrinsic monetary and industrial value.

And despite that inherent worth, silver sometimes goes through frenzied buying manias, not unlike Bitcoin’s 2017 run-up.

In my view, that same kind of “Tulip Mania” lies ahead for silver investors, only bigger. And while that may not happen in 2018, it almost surely will in the next few years.

So let me show you why I think so and, what’s more, how you can position yourself for maximum profit…

Silver’s Demand Explosion Is Quite Unlike Gold

Silver’s particular status as both an industrial and a monetary metal is going to help drive exploding demand.

Unlike gold, about 50% of annual silver production gets consumed by various industries, never to be seen again.

High tech, consumer tech, and the whole green tech trend are pushing up consumption. Smart TVs, computers, tablets, smartphones, smart energy grids, electric vehicles, and solar panels all need silver.

About 70% of mined silver is what’s called “byproduct.” That means it’s produced only as a result of mining other metals like gold, lead, zinc, and copper. The remaining 30% comes from mines which primarily produce silver itself.

Thanks to a multi-year commodity bear market, byproduct silver is in low supply. That’s starting to change, though only slowly, as base metals prices have been rising since early 2016.

But 2017 has been a challenging year for silver production. According to the SRSrocco Report, two-thirds of primary silver miners have seen their production fall this year. And World Metal Statistics reported that silver production has been adversely affected in some key producing nations in the first eight months of 2017: down 1% in Peru, 2% in Mexico, 19% in Australia, and 20% in Chile.