SLV does track the price of silver probably with paper contracts. There is no way they can source the physical silver to satisfy current demand. The metal is simply not there. This is why you have to buy physical silver. PSLV would be a much more reliable option. You may think this is a distraction from GME, but I followed the silver story for over a decade and it's pretty clear this is the most surpressed market in the world. Banker boy Jeffrey Christian even admitted that the derivatives market is at least 100 times bigger than the actual physical market. So SLV is just one way they manipulate the market by diverting massive amounts of money away from the physical market. Enough people buy physical and the squeeze is real.