Ironically, the abundance of silver caused the crisis of the silver economy. Most German states before unification had minted silver currencies, but in 1871 Bismark's newly created Germany had decided to stop minting silver coins and to adopt instead the gold standard. The USA had backed its currency with both gold and silver and minted both types of coins, but in April 1873 the USA abandoned silver and moved de facto to a gold standard. France, the country that had been setting the exchange value between gold and silver currencies, stopped silver coinage in September. Several other European countries moved swiftly to gold. Silver prices declined. As a result, silver currencies depreciated sharply. Wall Street's financial "Panic of 1873" was not caused by the silver but it impacted California too. The "panic" started when a Philadelphia bank, Jay Cooke & Company, heavily invested in railroad bonds, failed in September. The railroad industry was the largest employer outside agriculture in the USA. Within one year, more than 100 railroads declared bankruptcy. In 1875 the double whammy of the "Panic" and of the gold standard, combined with the fact that the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 had reduced commerce with Asia (it was faster for the East Coast to reach the Far East via Suez), caused the crash of the San Francisco stock market and the collapse of the Bank of California. Ralston was ruined and probably killed himself (he was found drowned).

Then Virginia City experienced its biggest fire in 1875, and in 1878 a rich lode was discovered in Bodie, attracting thousands of disaffected Comstock residents. In 1877 the lumber market crashed too, because two of lumber's main customers were railways and mines. Many sawmills of Truckee had to close. In 1882 the San Francisco Stock and Bond Exchange was established, which, unlike the old Stock Exchange (later renamed Mining Exchange), dealt in a variety of non-mining stocks. Inevitably, the Chinese became scapegoats: when in 1878 the Truckee and Steamboat Springs Canal Company hired the San Francisco-based Chinese firm Quong Yee Wo/ Lung Chung & Company to dig a 50-kilometer irrigation canal from Truckee to Reno and this firm brought in 115 Chinese laborers, the Workingmen protested and a few days later a fire destroyed Virginia City's Chinese quarter. The Chinese were cleansed from Truckee and Virginia City by 1886.

Nonetheless, the market value of the Comstock Lode had peaked in 1876, and record production of gold and silver had been achieved in 1877.