As Bitcoin faces a weekly decline of 4.5%, trading at $114,100 at press time, gold advocate Peter Schiff has reignited his long-running critique of the crypto asset.
As Bitcoin faces a weekly decline of 4.5%, trading at $114,100 at press time, gold advocate Peter Schiff has reignited his long-running critique of the crypto asset.
In a on X, Schiff highlighted performance figures since November 2024, right after Donald Trump’s election win. According to him, Bitcoin is only up 16%, while MicroStrategy (now renamed Strategy) stock is down 3%. Meanwhile, gold has surged 27%, and the gold miner ETF $GDX has jumped 50%.
Schiff’s comparison sought to highlight the advantage of holding precious metals over digital assets and related equities during that period.
Schiff’s post drew immediate pushback from the Bitcoin community. Sith Sou challenged Schiff’s framing, suggesting that if investors had bought Bitcoin the first time Schiff publicly criticized it, they would be sitting on enormous gains today.
Similarly, “The Bitcoin Therapist” argued that a decade-long view would show Bitcoin up 44,000%, implying that gold’s recent rally is minor in comparison.
Jackie Robson also weighed in, accusing Schiff of cherry-picking the timeframe. He said that if he zoomed out to a one-year chart or further, his argument would quickly fall apart.
Eli Nagar criticized the logic of comparing short-term performance to discredit a long-term asset. He said Bitcoin wasn’t built to outperform gold in just eight months, but rather to outlast it over generations.
Meanwhile, Schiff responded to these comments by stating that the past opportunity in Bitcoin no longer matters because he didn’t buy in. He emphasized that his focus is on the present, where he believes precious metals and mining stocks offer better prospects than Bitcoin.
The exchange comes amid a broader pullback in the Bitcoin market. The asset has fallen 7.3% from its recent peak of $123,200 reached on July 14. Meanwhile, Strategy made three large Bitcoin purchases last month:
Despite the short-term losses, Strategy holds a total of 628,791 BTC, now worth around $71.73 billion. This gives the company an overall unrealized profit of approximately $25 billion. Still, Schiff continues to warn that MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin-focused approach is highly speculative.
