Peter Schiff’s History of Crypto and Gold
It is easy to summarize the “famous” investor Peter Schiff: he loves gold and hates crypto. Let’s take a look at Schiff’s curious history with the two assets.
COVERED
- Introduction
- Peter Schiff and Crypto
- Bitcoin hate
- Current relationship with Crypto
- History of gold
INTRODUCTION
Peter Schiff is an influencer, investment manager, media personality, author and outspoken advocate for investing in gold. Currently the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, Schiff is known to evangelize buying gold as an investment strategy, but also claims that BTC is a scam. His estimated net worth is $70 million. Most of them come from his brokerage firm Euro Pacific Capital, his blogs, several books and various other media show that he is in control. He also appears frequently on Financial News programming, which he uses as a platform to regularly recommend gold as a safe investment, as his most consistent recommendations are for gold, a position motivated by deep faith and his own self-interest.
Peter Schiff and Crypto
Schiff has become infamous in the crypto world for regularly taking the opportunity to troll BTC and even crossing swords with the likes of Elon Musk on Twitter. He has always advocated gold as a commodity and has openly criticized cryptocurrencies.
Peter started his investment career as a financial consultant at Shearson Lehman Brothers. He earned a degree in finance and accounting from UC Berkeley in 1987. A financial professional for over 20 years, he is the owner of Euro Pacific Asset Management, in addition to being the chief economist of Euro Pacific Capital. Euro Pacific Capital is a division of Alliance Global Partners. He is also the owner of SchiffGold, which is a precious metals dealer based in Manhattan.
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SCHIFF’S HATE OF BITCOIN
As a financial expert, Schiff has been against investing in cryptocurrency. He said: “The truth is that the real success of Bitcoin rests on more people buying it. If you own it, you have to get a lot of your friends or colleagues to buy it because that’s how the price goes up. Bitcoin is not a asset like real estate where you can collect rent, stocks where you can collect dividends, or bonds where you get paid interest. It’s not like a commodity where you can actually use it for something, like oil, to generate power. It’s not like gold where you can make jewelry out of it or conduct electricity with it or use it in all kinds of industrial applications like other metals.”
This is the main reason why Peter is skeptical about cryptocurrency. According to him, it’s just not backed by anything other than people buying it, which undermines its value. He went on to say, “It’s just a hype machine. If Bitcoin is still going to be here for the next 20 to 50 years, it just means more people are going to lose money. That’s because as more people pile into it, this means that the bubble gets bigger and bigger. Then there is a lot more loss when it pops.”
He believes it is quite similar to what happened during the Dot Com bubble period of the late 1990s, when many people invested in Internet-based startups filled with speculation that they would soon become profitable. But eventually many of these companies failed, creating a massive financial crisis all around.
CURRENT STATUS OF BITCOIN
Peter Schiff, who is pro-gold and anti-Bitcoin, has been turned into a bitcoin holder despite his best wishes. Aside from his vocal disdain for crypto, he has admitted to having Bitcoin gifted to him by some members of the Cryptoverse. He had claimed on January 20 that his wallet account with service provider blockchain.com had been “destroyed”, meaning he had “lost” all his money. As previously reported, Schiff stated that he had known all along that Bitcoin was “inherently worthless” as he added: “I knew owning Bitcoin was a bad idea, I just never realized it was that bad” But three days later , returned to Twitter to post that “I (he) mistook my PIN for my password. When blockchain updated their app, I (he) got logged out. Honest but costly mistake.” He went on to say, “What the episode shows is how easy it is to lose Bitcoin if you’re confused about how wallets work” Schiff ended up admitting that he wanted to keep the coins. He tweeted, “I guess I’ll have to keep it and go down with the ship.”
SCHIFF’S HISTORY WITH GOLD
It’s no secret that Peter Schiff is bullish on gold. He has consistently criticized US monetary and fiscal policy and claims that an economic disaster is looming in the US and abroad. In that scenario, according to Schiff, gold is the best choice to provide a safe haven for capital amid a collapsing world economy. Not surprisingly, Schiff’s current list of stock recommendations is heavily embedded in gold. Gold prices have jumped over 20% so far this year, leading to strong gains in stocks across the industry.
The largest shareholder in Schiff’s gold fund is Franco Nevada Corp (FNV 0.96%), a Canadian-based owner of gold royalties and natural resource investments. The fund’s second largest holding is in the gold miner Agnico Eagle Miners (AEM 0.09%)
Similarly, four of the top five holdings in EuroPac’s International Value Fund are gold miners. All these stocks have done well, but if we look at a slightly longer time horizon, they have followed alternative investments.
According to the Associated Press, Schiff’s Euro Pacific International Bank was granted a license in 2017. However, it has since run into trouble after deposits fell to $150 million. Two years ago, the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement, a government-run anti-tax crime and money laundering unit, stepped in “to stop the suspected facilitation of offshore tax evasion and money laundering,” Schiff said, saying he would fight to save his ailing business. He said. “It costs a fortune to run a small bank. Therefore, I never really made any money. The compliance costs are outrageous.” Some Bitcoiners responded to him, “Bitcoin fixes this” Another explained, “Regulators cannot shut down, shut down or freeze your Bitcoin.”
However, Schiff claimed in a recent BTC-themed tweet: “These average-down bargain hunters will eventually be known as bag holders.” Words like these have alienated many Bitcoiners. However, many in the room see Schiff as a harmless and sometimes amusing eccentric. At least he’s a villain the crypto world can rally around.
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