system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
why did silver moon to 120$ in 1980 and came back to 20$?

it was such a huge spike followed by a huge dump. Why did it happen?
gpt
Three brothers Nelson, William, and Lamar Hunt; part of the Texas oil billionaire Hunt family, tried to corner the entire silver market. They took gigantic margin loans and managed to buy up to a third of all outstanding silver in the market. The shortage got so bad that jewelry companies like Tiffany & Co took out full page ads to condemn the Hunt brothers for blatant market manipulation.

What the Hunt brothers did wasn't illegal per se, but neither was putting in new rules to punish them. The exchange (COMEX) attempted multiple rounds of arbitration to attempt to resolve the situation peacefully, but the Hunt brothers refused, thinking they could ride this rocket to the moon.

Eventually COMEX passed two new rules designed specifically to punish them. The first rule banned making more than 500 contracts per month in silver; and the second rule temporarily banned buying any silver and only allowed selling. The second rule was announced effective for the day on each day, and would ultimately come to last two months.

This caused the brothers to lose so much money that the brokers which had lent them the money to make this trade were in danger of going bankrupt. They were eventually able to negotiate a rescue package using all their personal wealth as collateral, and still lost a billion dollars. 8 years later they were finally convicted of conspiracy charges to corner the silver market (their lawyers had been using a strategy centered around delaying the conviction as much as possible) and declared bankruptcy.