Peter Schiff is a great man. He comes from a family of great men. Irwin Schiff is a hero who stood steadfast to his beliefs, and he should always be remembered. This should be acknowledged before going on with an essay that may seem like an attack on Peter Schiff, but this is more of a wake-up call to a man who has been right more than he has been wrong. But he is dead wrong on Bitcoin and crypto.
Back before the Great Recession of 2008, Schiff was on all the major news stations explaining the housing bubble and the risk of a deep recession. Instead of the news heeding his warning, he instead was getting laughed at. Schiff is the head of Euro Pacific Asset Management, has the Peter Schiff Show, a podcast/radio show, and currently lives in Porto Rico due to the favorable tax treatment as opposed to being in the United States proper. A very important thing to note is that Schiff also sells gold and silver. And this may very well be a factor in his dislike of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, as it goes to prove the old saying, “All Politics Is Local.”
Schiff debated Max Keiser at the Nexus Conference in Aspen, CO, on September 22nd, 2017. Keiser even yelled exuberantly at Schiff about how blockchain cryptocurrency is more important than the printing press. It seems Schiff has not taken the years since this debate to do one shred of an investigation into that insight.
Schiff recently tweeted (and I could not control myself with a response):
Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH), and the list can go on all can be a store of value, a currency, have use cases as commodities, and are investment assets. Specifically, the market driving crypto is BTC, which Schiff seems not to understand anything about. I would encourage Schiff to read Bitcoin.com, Hope.com, and Read.Cash or simply listen to his son Spenser.
I encouraged Spenser to start a podcast if he has not. Just take the things his father talks about that he is correct on, and add his understanding of BTC and crypto, and he would have a winning combination. That way, Peter Schiff’s views which are influenced by his father, Austrian Economics, and other positive sources, and would be updated to the reality of the current times.
Institutionalized Inertia
Schiff suffers from the same problem most people who cannot wrap their heads around crypto have. That is, their frame of reference never changes. Warren Buffet still thinks Bitcoin is “rat poison squared,” with his head stuck in the old days when near-zero interest rates could prop up his (even bad) stock calls over the past thirty years. It seems that most people, like Schiff, cannot go outside of their frame of reference, and the fact he is a seller of gold/silver does not help. Not everyone is as dogmatic as Buffet and Schiff, and it would be unfair to mention all of the institutions which at one time said that crypto is terrible, but now they are buying in. But since this is one of my lesser academic posts, that is precisely what we will do:
I hope that Spenser gets to Schiff. I would hate to see all of the positive things Schiff has done be overshadowed by his complete ignorance and lack of willingness to understand new technology in this one arena.
Life, Liberty, And Property
Michael Saylor said, “If you believe everyone has a natural right to life, liberty, and property, then it is only a matter of time before you believe in #Bitcoin.” I could not agree more. That is why I still think there is hope for Schiff.
I encourage everyone to jump on Twitter and go after Schiff to learn about BTC, and to encourage Spenser to start his own podcast. Get the Cyber Hornets engaged in spreading the message and winning over someone who should have been on board with the future long ago.
