Here is an idea.
Revert smelting to what it was before and make silver unsmeltable. As far as i know silver ore smelting was the only thing being exploited.
At the same time put silver bars for sale in npc stalls for 500 silver. That way they are still obtainable.
Disabling alloying without actually fixing anything was a bad ***** idea. Its been more than half a year before it got changed and the change didnt do anything beside make people grind 4x times much who need huge quantities of consumable iron