Famed gold supporter and investor Peter Schiff hasn’t quite gone down in the books as a supporter of bitcoin.
Late last year, Schiff appeared on CNBC program “Futures Now” to denounced the digital currency, calling it a “modern-day tulip mania” and saying he doesn’t “think it’s going to end up being a source of commerce for the world.”
Fast forward to today. Schiff’s Euro Pacific Precious Metals is now accepting bitcoin — as you may have seen in the headlines this morning — allowing gold bugs to get their paws on the precious metal using digital currency. The same digital currency Schiff called a “modern-day tulip mania.”
“Bitcoin offers tremendous benefits as a medium of exchange for both our domestic and international customers. A wire transfer of fiat funds can be slow and expensive for the customer, and credit card fees are too high to absorb at the low premiums we offer. Not only does BitPay’s service make business sense, but we are excited about giving owners of bitcoin the opportunity to inexpensively and reliably convert any excess holdings into precious metals rather than back to fiat currency,” said Michael Finger, who heads marketing at Euro Pacific.
Despite the maneuver, Schiff’s sticking to his guns, telling CNBC.com that he still feels the way he did last year.
“My views have not evolved,” he wrote. “A lot of people still own bitcoins, and for now, they are still valuable. So I certainly want to make it easier for bitcoin owners to use their bitcoins to purchase gold and silver from my company.”
This, in our view, is significant. The move reminds us that bitcoin has very much become a reality in the financial sector — and it’s only getting bigger by the day.
[textmarker color=”C24000″]Source[/textmarker] CNBC [textmarker color=”C24000″]Image[/textmarker] Gage Skidmore