I know it was sold forward.
And that's part of the problem, with gold leasing, etc. They loan the gold, and still keep it on the books as physical.
From what I hear, there are naked contracts for something like ten times the actual amount of physical silver in the world. If the holders decide they want physical, instead of a cash premium, silver prices would go to the moon.
A few are actually predicting that silver may become higher valued than gold.
That's true. Two years ago an executive if a major mining company decided to buy physical gold as an asset and was told by the broker he would have to wait three months for delivery.
This is when gold was sitting at under $300 and was supposedly the market was oversupplied.
He did some investigating an realized that the gold was in a physical deficit and the market was being manipulated through speculative forward sales contracts.
In other words the majors were underwater on forward sales and selling contracts into the market to protect their positions.
When gold started to rise the new mantra was retire forward sales commitments.
That's why there's a flurry of gold exploration and the price is rising. Derivatives are pushing the gold bull.