Since bitcoin started falling from its all-time high last year, the economist and gold bug, Peter Schiff, made sure everyone knows that he wholeheartedly believes the leading crypto asset will fall to zero. Now that FTX has collapsed, Schiff has doubled down on his belief and he’s wasted no opportunities to dunk on bitcoin throughout the chaos. On Monday, Schiff said on Twitter that currently, it’s “not a crypto winter” nor a “crypto ice age,” because that implies a spring thaw is coming. Schiff insists bitcoin’s price is not going to bounce back and this time around he thinks we’ll see a “crypto extinction.”
Peter Schiff Expects a Crypto Extinction Rather Than a Thawing Crypto Winter
Peter Schiff has been criticizing bitcoin (BTC) a great deal more these days ever since the FTX collapse last week. Schiff detailed on Monday that he was scheduled to deliver a keynote presentation at the Dubai Precious Metals Conference (DPMC) on Nov. 21-22.
“Last year the keynote was delivered by [Microstrategy’s Michael Saylor],” Schiff tweeted. “He told the audience to sell all their gold and buy bitcoin. On the day he spoke Bitcoin traded above $60K, while gold was trading near $1,850. Since then gold is down 4% and Bitcoin is down 73%.”
The DPMC schedule says that the “financial expert and author will discuss the end of dollar hegemony, the demise of bitcoin, and the global remonetisation of gold.” Prior to revealing he was attending the DPMC, Schiff criticized the Super Bowl champion Tom Brady’s association with FTX.
“With bitcoin so far below the $100K target, I think it’s about time that the rest of you [hodlers] follow [Tom Brady] and remove the laser beams from your eyes on your Twitter profiles. Tom Brady wouldn’t be the GOAT if he didn’t learn from his mistake,” Schiff said.
Schiff added that the crypto economy was the first to break since the U.S. Federal Reserve started the quantitive tightening cycle. In Schiff’s opinion, cryptocurrencies are just the “weakest link in the risk chain, having the most leverage and least real value.”
Schiff insisted that now that the chain has a broken link, “the chain is weaker and more likely to fail.” Schiff also recently noted that he disagreed with Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful, when O’Leary said he was “going to fly to Washington” because he wants crypto regulation now.
“I disagree with [Kevin O’Leary],” Schiff responded in response to O’Leary’s statements. “More Govt. regulation is not the solution. The lesson of FTX is for investors to do better due diligence and not just foolishly jump on speculative [bandwagons]. Also, we need sound money with interest rates set by free markets, not central banks.”
Schiff Believes the Crypto Rally Will ‘Never Be Repeated — Bitcoin Mania Is Over’
On the anniversary of bitcoin’s all-time price high five days ago, Schiff remarked that the entire crypto rally last year “was a fraud.” The gold bug further stressed that the crypto rally will “never be repeated — bitcoin mania is over.” On Monday, Schiff talked about the crypto winter and told his 866,700 Twitter followers that this current crypto downturn is not a crypto winter.
“This is not a crypto winter,” Schiff wrote. “That implies spring is coming. This is also not a crypto ice age, as even that came to an end after a couple of million years. This is crypto extinction. But blockchain will live on. Gold will rise again to lead a new breed of asset-backed cryptos,” Schiff added.
The economist’s commentary was mocked quite a bit after he said this was a “crypto extinction,” and one person dunked on Schiff’s now-defunct bank in Puerto Rico. “How’s your bank Peter?” the person asked. Schiff however, responded to the critic and said: “It would have been doing great, but [the] government and the media killed it — The market will kill bitcoin.”
What do you think about Peter Schiff’s claims that this time around the crypto economy’s downturn signals a “crypto extinction” rather than a “crypto winter”? Let us know your thoughts about this subject in the comments section below.