Mercury remains commercially real in 2025, but unlike most metals its supply chain is shaped as much by environmental treaty law as by geology. Elemental mercury is still produced from cinnabar and sold as liquid metal, yet the Minamata Convention has made new primary mines illegal for parties and put a sunset on existing ones. That shifts the market's center of gravity toward legacy producers, recycling, and regulated storage and disposal channels rather than conventional mine-growth narratives.

Demand is also unusual. The largest remaining intentional use is artisanal and small-scale gold mining, followed by acetylene-route vinyl chloride monomer production and a shrinking tail of chlor-alkali, lamps, switches, instruments, and specialty chemical uses. In other words, mercury is a live commodity, but it is a commodity in managed decline: still traded, still mined in a few jurisdictions, and still indispensable in some niches, while the dominant policy direction is phaseout and containment rather than expansion.