Peter Schiff has been a vocal opponent of Bitcoin, but in an interview with Kitco News on Wednesday, he said there is a form of cryptocurrency that he could potentially support.
The chief market strategist of Euro Pacific Asset Management told Kitco News that a “legitimate” cryptocurrency is a gold-backed token that could replace fiat currencies in utility.
“The only cryptocurrencies that would make sense would be legitimate cryptocurrencies, just like I don’t like fiat paper currency, that is paper currency backed by real money, I don’t like fiat digital currency. But, if you have a digital currency that’s backed by gold and redeemable in gold, well then that’s fine, that’s great, I think that would work perfectly,” Schiff said. “The problem is governments don’t like that, so if there are credible digital currencies backed by gold, everybody would prefer those currencies to the dollar, euro, yen.”
Schiff has been debating the merits of Bitcoin on Twitter with such prominent investors as Mark Cuban, who himself was previously a crypto skeptic.
Schiff’s son, in contrast to his father, is a firm ‘hodler’ of Bitcoin and has actively voiced counter arguments to Schiff’s anti-Bitcoin statements on social media as well.
“I’ve been exactly where my son is now, and my son will be where I am now in the future where he may have a son who’s just as cocky as he is [who thinks] that he and his generation have reinvented the wheel and they know everything,” he said. “I’m not saying there isn’t a compelling, sexy story that’s causing people to believe in Bitcoin, I just think it’s all wrong. I think, at the end of the day when you peel the onion and you get to what’s really there, there’s nothing there.”
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