Noted gold bug and Bitcoin basher Peter Schiff has told Anthony Pompliano, one of Bitcoin’s most fervent supporters, that the smart money is “just trying to get out” of Bitcoin, and that the $20,000 high seen in 2017 is the highest it will reach for some time, perhaps all time. Appearing on Pompliano’s Off the Chain podcast, Schiff, who has been criticizing Bitcoin for almost it’s entire existence, also spoke of a looming financial crisis within the world economy, adding that gold was a much safer bet than Bitcoin when it came to protecting assets.
Bitcoin is “Digital Nothing”
In the podcast, Schiff compared the giving of Bitcoin in return for goods and services to “giving me digital nothing”, adding that “gold has all sorts of uses, Bitcoin has none”. Schiff, who was ridiculed for suggesting that gold investors “buckle up” after gold crept over $1,400 in June, also reinforced his belief that the Bitcoin bubble had already burst and that the recent rallies were simply holders wanting to cash out before the real crash:
I just think that this is another big bubble, it’s going to pop…personally I think the high is in for this bubble. I think that spike up to $20,000 at the end of 2017…I think that was it, and now it’s a question of the air coming out. You have rallies, you have people getting excited, saying “it’s going to twenty thousand, it’s going to fifty thousand”, but I think the smart money is just trying to get out, and I think you just don’t want to be the bag holder.
Schiff Home Alone
Schiff also tried to argue that gold’s utility made it a more reliable store of value than Bitcoin, positing that if gold were to crash to $500 then the increased level of demand from manufacturers of jewelry and the like would be able to afford to use it, so would snap it up, driving up the price. This ignores the fact that Bitcoin hit $3,200 in December 2018 and was snapped up by investors to the point where it reached $14,000 six months later. Schiff went on to slate Bitcoin’s use cases compared to gold, eventually asking of Pompliano, “if I was sitting alone in my house with my Bitcoin, what can I do with it?” The question there should be what does he do with his gold…?
