TLDR; it’s temporary and complicated

I believe it to be temporary; recall when oil went negative? This should be impossible in the commodities market- however it demonstrates the absurdity of the “market”.

In reality there is the “paper” market, and the physical market. People who invest in metals, and to a lesser extent equities are aware of the difference.

Because of the obviousness of the pending pain, as the price of delivered oil rose, the paper market began to bet bigly on more rises. These “bets” in commodity markets are based on the physical delivery of the underlying, having a lot of people purchase options to buy with no intent or even capability to accept delivery results in a pretty easy margin call forcing.

When the bullish bets have been culled is when we will see physical scarcity return; and prices rise. Also gambling liquidity is low (less speculation); and people are poor, so they aren’t consuming as much.