Peter Schiff is not shy about his dislike of Bitcoin. In fact, he talks about the cryptocurrency almost as much as he talks about his favourite shiny yellow metal.
To the proponents of Bitcoin, a lot of Peter Schiff’s Tweets are amusing, particularly since he doesn’t see that almost all of the points he makes about gold are relevant to Bitcoin. However, his latest anti-Bitcoin rant is a special one – namely because he appears to have grasped the figures used to labour his point from thin air.
Hey, Peter, Just Where are you Getting that Bitcoin Price From?
In a Tweet posted earlier today, the famous gold hoarder Peter Schiff once again outlined the virtues of gold at the expense of Bitcoin. Clearly feeling smug about the metal’s recent price rise, he argued that since a date apparently randomly cherry-picked by himself, June 19th, Bitcoin has had every chance to outperform gold but hasn’t.
Since June 19th, favorable press, weakness in global currency and stock markets, falling interest rates, and a 10% rise in the gold price, have provided ample reasons for Bitcoin speculators to buy. Yet Bitcoin’s price fell 15%! Hodlers should wonder who’s been selling, and why?
— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) August 8, 2019
He argued that Bitcoin has received favourable press, along with a positive macro economic climate for investors to want to favour safe haven assets, yet still the Bitcoin”price fell 15%”. Only, it didn’t. It was actually below its current price of around $11,595 on Peter’s seemingly random date. The price of Bitcoin was more than $2,000 lower than on June 19 than it is today.
Naturally, proponents of the leading digital asset were quick on the gold bug’s case about his seemingly random date selection. Long-time Bitcoiner Francis Pouliot attempted to put the gold investor straight by stating:
“You, sir, are lying. Bitcoin increased $2000 per coin since June 19th.”
Another respondent, @mattunchi, gave Schiff the benefit of the doubt and presumed he meant that it had fallen 15 percent from its recent high. However, given the price performance of Bitcoin during the rest of the year versus gold, the asset with the biggest gains for investors is obvious. The Twitter user replied to Schiff:
“yeah it fell 15% after a rally of 200%”
Schiff eventually responded to another of the comments on his Tweet to state that he had meant the “19” to refer to the year, not the date in June. He really meant Bitcoin had fallen 15 percent from its recent yearly high of around $14,000.
However, we’d like to refer you once again to the above response from Twitter user @mattunchi. Bitcoin has wiped the floor with gold in terms of profits for its holders over the last eight months. Then compare the asset’s over the last eight years…
Yes, it has now fallen to below its yearly high at a time that gold is close to its but given that gold has a huge market capitalisation of more than $8 trillion and Bitcoin’s is in the hundreds of billions, along with the fact that gold has been used to store value for thousands of years and Bitcoin is just ten years’ old, makes comparisons like Peter’s seem just silly. In terms of qualities that make them suitable for use as money, the two offer some that are similar. Otherwise, they are entirely different.
Comparing the two in terms of percentage increases over a cherry-picked date adds nothing at all to the wider debate about the need for hard money in a world where government’s routinely devalue their currencies – something that Peter Schiff is very passionate about. Instead, it yet again feels like more self-serving mud slinging from a gold bug that is increasingly afraid of being caught on the wrong side of history.
Related Reading: Despite Bitcoin “Gold 2.0” Narrative, Long-Term Correlation With Gold Remains Loose
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