Despite yet another bear market recovery, our beloved Peter Schiff is still sticking to his guns that Bitcoin is a worthless and speculative asset that is heading to near zero.
https://x.com/PeterSchiff/status/1763254015167533369?s=20
At this point, given that Bitcoin has recovered from so many extended bear markets, Peter's tweets are starting to look pretty ridiculous, don't you think? After all, more and more fiat money is being converted into BTC, and its adoption seems to be picking up pace. But what if Peter is actually right on Bitcoin in the long-run?
Who Is Peter Schiff
If you don't know who Peter Schiff is, you probably haven't been paying much attention to economics, monetary policy, or Bitcoin for the past decade. Peter is the owner of Schiff Gold, a company that sells precious metals to consumers, and he's a vocal opponent of the Federal Reserve (the Fed). He's made appearances on mainstream media outlets like FOX and MSNBC to criticize the Fed, and is an active Bitcoin-basher on Twitter too.
Peter was made famous for predicting the financial crisis of 2008, and since then he's been preaching that the end of the dollar is near due to the Fed's reckless monetary policy, and the US government's out-of-control spending. He constantly advises his listeners to protect themselves from impending inflation by purchasing precious metals such as gold.
Gold vs. Bitcoin
While Peter constantly talks about how "the bottom is going to drop out of dollar", he rarely talks about how to actually implement a solution. Yes, we could go back to a gold standard, but doing so would not eliminate the counterparty risk that has existed for centuries, meaning that we would still need to trust the custodian of the gold not to lie about their reserves, or outright steal it from us.
Peter's advice to buy gold is not unfounded. Gold has always been the traditional hedge against inflation, and it didn't have that much competition until Bitcoin hit the scene back in 2009. Peter was introduced to Bitcoin several times in its early years by the likes of Erik Voorhees and Max Keiser, but he never took a liking to it.
Bitcoin Is "Fools Gold"
Peter's position has always been that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. He thinks that it's merely a speculative asset, and that people only buy it because they want to sell it at a higher price "to the next fool". While there is some truth to this, the fact that Bitcoin was the first ever censorship-resistant, immutable database did not strike him as a useful innovation.
Even though the dollar value of Bitcoin has gone from $1 in 2011 to $63,000 in 2024 (over the course of multiple bull/bear market cycles), Peter remains stubbornly adamant that Bitcoin is a bubble, bound to burst. The question we are proposing in this article is, could Peter actually be right about Bitcoin's long-term value proposition?
Bitcoin Is Just The Beginning
After all, we may realize in the future that Bitcoin was simply the first building block of our future financial system. A system that will eventually be composed of smart contracts, NFTs, decentralized exchanges, and other innovations. We cannot deny that a lot of people are buying Bitcoin these days simply for its dollar value, not realizing that the dollar itself could soon collapse under the weight of excessive government debt.
And if the value of the dollar were to plummet, would people still be so keen to hold and use Bitcoin, or would they gravitate towards cryptocurrencies that have real-world utility, such as tokens that can be used to pay for services like WiFi access, 5G coverage, virtual servers, GPU processing power, and more?
In my opinion, the best argument that Peter makes against Bitcoin is that it could be replaced by something better in the future. Similar to how Facebook eventually replaced MySpace as the most popular social media website. If you want to learn more about the different perspectives of no-coiners, Bitcoin maxis, and shitcoiners, check out my other article here.
At this point, I think the best course of action Peter could take to save his reputation is to point to all the alternative cryptocurrencies that could take market share from Bitcoin in the future. Then he could say that he was anti-Bitcoin, but pro-crypto all along, and may actually end up being right.
Unfortunately, he is on record saying that ALL cryptocurrencies are a joke, and referred to them all as "pets.com" at the end of one of his podcasts.
Learn More About TradFi
Aside from his stance on cryptocurrency, I must say that I'm a fan of Peter's work. By listening to his podcasts, I have learned a great deal about the economy and how it's been affected by the non-conventional fiscal and monetary policies since 2008.
If you want to understand more about these subjects and the economy at a deeper level, I recommend you listen to Peter's podcasts to build a fundamental understanding of the traditional financial system.
He's been logically explaining how bailouts, artificially low interest rates, and quantitative easing will lead to a dollar collapse for over a decade. But as the saying goes, "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent".
The Verdict Isn't In Yet
At the end of the day, Peter may actually be right about Bitcoin. We need to acknowledge that innovation in the cryptocurrency space will not stop. No matter how deeply we are emotionally attached to a certain coin or project, there will always be competitors that are gaining market share in a variety of online and physical communities.
If you found this post interesting, be sure to check out my other posts on cryptocurrency and finance here on the HIVE blockchain. You can also follow me on InLeo for more frequent updates.
Until next time...
Resoures
Bitcoin vs. Gold Image [1]
Peter Beside Breaking Bitcoin [2]