저자: PeterSchiff · 외국인
요약 보기
비트코인은 금의 디지털 대체재가 아니며 실사용처가 없어 내재가치가 0에 가깝다고 주장. 가격은 신규 매수자 유입에만 의존하므로 ETF 자금 이탈 시 폭락 가능성이 크다고 전망. 금은 비트코인과 반대로 움직이는 안전자산이며, 비트코인은 오히려 도박·게임 등과 경쟁한다고 봄.
다듬은 글
Could Bitcoin threaten gold? Yeah, I mean, in theory, right? They're saying Bitcoin is digital gold. So, why do I need real gold if I can have digital gold? But, the problem is it's not digital gold. I mean, that's just BS. Right? There's you you you can't replace gold with Bitcoin in any of its actual use cases, right?
I mean, I have here I mean, I'm wearing this watch, right? This is watch is has gold in it, right? It is this is a I got this gold bracelet from mene, right? mene.com, right? They can't make this bracelet with Bitcoin. You want to make this bracelet, you know, you can you need gold. Now, you can make you can make one out of silver if you don't want to have one out of gold, you can use a different metal.
But, if you want a gold bracelet, you can't use Bitcoin, right? Um computer chips, there's gold in there, little bits of gold to conduct electricity. You can't put Bitcoin in the computer chip instead of gold. You know, they use gold in dentistry. Uh they use it in aerospace. Uh there's all sorts of industrial applications.
In none of those applications can you substitute Bitcoin, right? It's it's not a metal, let alone a precious metal. You know, it's not even tangible. It's a string of numbers. And there's 20,000 other cryptos that you could use if you instead of uh Bitcoin. So, it's just to me um the the whole thing, you know, is just a giant blockchain letter.
I you know, people attribute value to Bitcoin that it doesn't have. It has a price. I mean, I don't argue with that. I mean, you can put a price on anything. I mean, look at Peloton during the pandemic. Peloton shares were $170. Now, they're three. So, was Peloton worth $170 a share? Well, that's what the price was because some idiot was willing to buy it at that price.
Uh it doesn't mean the company was, you know, fundamentally worth that much. So, sure, someone could buy Bitcoin and pay $64,000 for it. Does that mean it's got $64,000 worth of value? No, it's just got that market value because somebody was willing to pay that price. you think Bitcoin is actually worth?
I don't know what it's worth. It may not be worth anything. It may be worth some nominal amount. I mean, what if it's worth $100? I don't know, maybe it is. I I don't know. At this point it's irrelevant whether it's worth zero or $100 because if it goes to $100, it might as well go to zero for 99.9% of the people who own it, right?
They're going to be effectively wiped out if Bitcoin goes to 100. Even if it goes to 1,000, right? From 60,000, right? You've lost pretty much everything. It has to be worth you know, you know, something near the current price, which I I can't imagine what Bitcoin could possibly do that would create that much value.
And for a lot of the use cases that people are coming up with, like ordinals, right? Like, "Hey, I created an ordinal, too. It's called uh Golden Triumph, right? It's a picture of an arm holding up a gold bar, right? You know, I I I put it on a on an ordinal on the block Bitcoin blockchain, and you can go you can buy them at Magic Eden now.
We sold out of them. There was like 50 of them, but they're trading, you can buy an ordinal." But you only need you can put the ordinal on on a Satoshi. It's all you need is one. There's 21 quadrillion Satoshis. I mean, there's enough for everybody in the world to have a few hundred thousand Satoshis.
And so I don't see where there's a shortage of these things. You don't need a whole Bitcoin, right? You just need a Satoshi. There's no real difference between a Satoshi and a Bitcoin other than the fact that a Bitcoin is a whole bunch of Satoshis. Now people say, "Well, but an ounce of gold is just a whole bunch of specs of gold." Yes, but you can't do anything with a spec, right?
You actually need a specific quantity. You want to make this gold Rolex. I think there's maybe 6 oz of gold in there. You can't make it with 1 oz. You need 6 oz, right? You need that specific quantity to do that job. But, I don't need any quantity of satoshis to do any job because you can't do anything with them.
All you can do is give them to somebody. And so, I don't see what's so unique about that. I mean, you do all these other cryptocurrencies, you can transfer. And look, I can use PayPal, I can use Venmo, I can use Zelle. There's all sorts of ways that I can transfer uh a payment to somebody over the internet cheaply, quicker than Bitcoin.
And if you really like um a digital currency, then tokenize gold. I mean, there there's there's already a bunch of these tokens out there. There you know, there'd be a lot more if it wasn't for the regulatory cost. But, all you have to do is take gold, tokenize it, and now gold can circulate as a digital payment.
I can own gold, and I can assign, transfer that ownership to anybody in the world instantly, practically free. And I'm just instead of sending you my gold, I'm sending you the token that signifies ownership of that gold. The gold just stays in a vault, and the ownership goes from one person to another.
What do you think it would take for Bitcoin to go to $100? The absence of buying. It doesn't even take a lot of selling. It just takes the absence of buying. Right? Because if people decide they don't want to buy Bitcoin anymore. And why do people want Bitcoin? The The vast majority of the buying is because people think they're going to make a lot of money buying it, right?
They they They think that the price of Bitcoin is going to go up, and they're going to get rich. And then they're going to sell their Bitcoin and buy a car, a boat, a house, take a vacation, buy new clothes. So, everybody is buying Bitcoin wants to sell it at some point. They can only sell it if there's somebody else who is equally confident that from that point the price will go up.
So, now they can buy a house and a car and a boat or whatever they want. But, if people stop believing in the fairy tale, then you run out of buyers. Now, without buyers, how do people sell to get the things they want? They they can't. So, the price will collapse. Right? So, I think it's not going to be that everybody starts selling.
It's going to be that new people stop buying. And then, as the price really starts to fall, maybe, you know, I don't think the true believers, the hardcore Bitcoiners, they're not going to be phased by Bitcoin going from 60,000 to 40,000. Right? They've seen that before. Been there, done that. Like, Bitcoin always comes back.
That may not be the case for the people who just bought into the Bitcoin ETF. So, I think they're going to be the first ones out. Right? They were the last ones in, they're going to be the first ones out. They're not long-term hodlers, even if they bought the one with the symbol hodl. They're they're traders, I think.
I mean, if they were real Bitcoin people, they would have bought years ago. They wouldn't have waited for an ETF. They got kind of suckered into it by the hype and the promotion, and they thought they could make some money. And that's going to be a big problem for Bitcoin, too, when the ETF starts to sell off, because um, you know, if you go back and look at prior Bitcoin crashes, you always have a big influx of Tether.
There's a lot of Tether, whether they're counterfeit Tether, we'll see. But, Tether comes in and buys up Bitcoin, and that puts in a bottom. But, when the ETFs start to liquidate, and now they have to take the Bitcoin that they own into the spot market and sell it, the buyer has to pay with real dollars.
They can't pay with Tether. And there may not be enough of those that want to buy Bitcoin. And so, I think that the next Bitcoin crash is going to be pretty big, cuz I think it's going to start in the ETFs, and it's going to exacerbate the decline when you have all these market orders, sell me Bitcoin at the market, whatever the price is.
No limits, just get me out by the end of the day. I have to get out. No I can't wait till tomorrow. I have to be out today. And then all of course the buyers are like, well, I'm not buying. Everybody steps away and it's a trapdoor. But so let's say now the ETF selling drives Bitcoin down to 10,000, right?
Not 20,000, not 10,000. And now you look at these charts like, wait a minute, Bitcoin just went below the previous low. It's now lower than it was 5 years ago, 6 years ago. The trend is broken. I think at some point you're going to shake the confidence of the hodlers who are be going to be like, you know, I don't know if it's going to come back again.
This maybe this is different. And and they're going to want to sell. And as it goes down, then you get the fear. Then you get, oh my god, I better get out before it's worthless, right? Even the diehards are like, I'm not going down with this ship. I mean, there are some people that say they're going to go down with the ship, but let's see what happens when it's actually sinking and they're, you know, up to their neck.
Are they really going to, you know, finish and drown? Or are they going to try to salvage something? Because, you know, there are people too that still bought in at much lower prices. So they can they can still sell Bitcoin at 5,000 and make a profit. There's not that many people left anymore that that have a cost basis that low.
But you know, they there are going to be some of them. Are they going to let that turn into a loss or they going to sell? So I I think the whole dynamic can change. Right now, everybody is very confident, very sure of themselves. They're all going to get rich. Everything else is a bunch of FUD. Tune it out.
Guys like Peter Schiff or Warren Buffett or any person who talks sense is just a boomer who doesn't get it. You know, we're trapped in the Stone Age. I mean, I just laugh I online always feel, Peter Schiff is smart about so many things, but he's an idiot about Bitcoin. It's like, you know, you know, if I'm smart about everything else, why would I be so dumb?
That's like, you know, well, if Peter only studied Bitcoin. So, you you think I haven't studied it? You don't think I haven't looked at it? They they just can't accept the fact that I'm a smart guy who has looked at it, who has studied it, and just doesn't, you know, believe it. I didn't drink the Kool-Aid, right?
I I had a good look at it, I smelled it, right? I just didn't want to didn't want to swallow it. Now, to answer your question, if people are going to look at it as an alternative to gold, yes, it could be a competitive threat to gold. There's some money that went into Bitcoin, not all of it, not even the majority of it, but some of it that might have gone into gold had it not gone into Bitcoin.
Now, gold is a much bigger market than Bitcoin. So, how much it might have affected the price it's hard to say. Maybe gold would be $100 or $200 higher, I don't know, if there was no Bitcoin. It's not like gold would be 10,000 or 20,000, but it could be a little bit higher. I don't think at the end of the day that really matters.
I mean, I think if you look at gold and Bitcoin, they more often trade in the opposite direction than in the same direction. I mean, Bitcoin is more of an anti-gold than a gold. Bitcoin is risk-on, gold is more risk-off. Bitcoin is speculative, gold is a safe-haven store value. Um so, I really don't see them as competitors.
I see I think Bitcoin competes with uh AMC or, you know, games, you know, GameStop, you know, or a lottery, or gambling on sports, right? That that's I think that's where the Bitcoin money might otherwise go if it wasn't in Bitcoin. And I feel badly though for the people who are buying it because they think it's a store value, they think it's an inflation hedge, they think it's digital gold.
They're wrong, right? That's part of the marketing hype, right? Of of Bitcoin. That's part of this the story, the sizzle that they're all they're all selling. I think I'm looking at it objectively because there are other people that are in the gold industry who are also proponents of Bitcoin. I mean, I see them.
Um so, it's not like you can't be in the gold business and you can't say, "Hey, buy gold and Bitcoin." Look, I tell people to buy gold and stocks and you know and in fact I didn't start SchiffGold until 2010. I started my broker-dealer in two 1997, 1996. So, for about 13 or 14 years I owned my own broker-dealer, yet I kept telling people to buy gold.
Not from me. I said, "Just go buy and buy it." I was trying to get people to invest with me in the stock market. I was a stock broker. And I said, "But you should also have some gold." And I knew that if people went out and bought gold, they couldn't send me that money to invest in the stock market, but I still recommended it.
Right? So, it's not like I only recommend gold because I sell gold. I recommend gold because I think people should own it. And the reason I ended up starting a SchiffGold was because a lot of people who were buying gold after I told them to were getting ripped off by companies who were selling them overpriced numismatics instead of bullion.
And so I set up my own company so I knew that people wouldn't get ripped off. And so I was very consistent. I recommended it before uh I I had SchiffGold and I continue to recommend it after I started SchiffGold. So, I could recommend I could tell people, "Hey, put 5% of your money in Bitcoin" if I believed in it and I would have done it myself if I believed in it.
You know, people tell me, "Oh, we think you secretly have Bitcoin." Why would I keep it a secret? Nobody who owns Bitcoin keeps it a secret. I mean, in fact, the minute you buy Bitcoin, you have to tell everybody else to buy it. That's part of the thing. It's like they're like the Hare Krishnas of the investment world.
You have to like can prosetize. You have to convince new people to buy it, right? Ever have Ever go to dinner, have a Thanksgiving, some family members in Bitcoin, telling everybody how they got to buy Bitcoin. I've noticed that with Tesla. When you buy a Tesla, you tell everyone else that you just bought a Tesla and you convince other people to also buy a Tesla.
Well, that's a little bit different. Maybe you know you know you kind of really like your Tesla and you enjoy driving it, and you're bragging about it, but you know, you're not going to sell your Tesla to profit one day. Bitcoin needs new converts. Right? The way Bitcoin goes up is people have to buy it.
So, you have to convince people. Now, people will say, "Well, that's the same thing with every other asset." No, it's not. If I buy a dividend-paying stock, nobody else has to buy those shares. I'll collect the dividends and make plenty of money. If I buy rental property, nobody has to buy my property.
I'm collecting rent. If I buy a bond, I'm collecting interest. I don't need new buyers to have a return on an investment. That's just not true. Now, yes, if if you buy uh a stock that doesn't pay any dividends, you need the price to go up. But, why would the price go up? Well, in theory, because the earnings came up, and the company eventually paid a dividend because it had earnings.
But, Bitcoin's never going to have any earnings. Never going to pay a dividend. Now, you can say, "Well, neither does gold." Well, gold doesn't have to. It's a commodity. You use it for things. Just like every other commodity. Wheat, soybeans, corn, cotton. These things are all used. You can buy them and hold them and trade them, but they have an underlying use.
Bitcoin does not. They people say, "Well, but I can give my Bitcoin to somebody else." Yes, I know that. You can give anything to somebody else. That doesn't mean it has a use because what does the person you gave it to do with it? Nothing but give it to somebody else. It's a It's a hot potato, right?
And yes, you can say, "Well, but I can do it quickly." Well, there's Yes, you can transfer other things quickly, too. But, one of the reasons it's so quick and inexpensive to transfer Bitcoin is because you're transferring nothing. It's a lot more expensive to transfer something than to transfer nothing.
But, there are 20,000 other nothings, and most of them you can transfer quicker and cheaper than you can Bitcoin.
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