Is Jane Street the cause of the silver price fluctuations?

Jane Street is currently the largest shareholder of the Blackrock silver trust, purchasing 20.6 million shares in just one quarter, accounting for 3.6% of the total outstanding shares.
Over 87% of their $662 billion investment portfolio is held in options. They profit by creating and trading price volatility with enormous leverage.
Silver is one of the most manipulated markets in the world because most transactions occur in paper futures rather than physical metal.

When a company with a huge options portfolio also holds the largest share of a physical metal ETF, they can manipulate the metal’s price just to make their options trades profitable.
In India, regulators have observed how Jane Street manipulates the cash market to profit from larger derivatives positions.
The pattern is always the same: build a massive position in the asset, establish a large options trade ten times bigger, then reverse to cash out.
This is similar to what we’ve seen in the cryptocurrency space when Terraform Labs filed lawsuits alleging they used similar tactics during Terra’s $40 billion collapse.
They are also accused of daily Bitcoin dumping at 10:00 AM ET, a trend that only stopped after the lawsuit became public.
This time, the situation is even more concerning because the silver is held by JPMorgan, a bank that has paid nearly $1 billion in fines for precious metal manipulation.

By acting as the custodian for Jane Street’s SLV position, JPMorgan provides the physical platform for Jane Street to operate their volatility machine.
When both the metal storage company and the largest shareholder have documented histories of market manipulation, the volatility we see is not accidental.