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I found Peter Ship on the floor. Big gold bug. Big anti- Bitcoin man. You can't replace gold with Bitcoin, right? I can't make jewelry out of Bitcoin. I can't conduct electricity with Bitcoin. I mean, they make Bitcoin look like gold. When they draw it, it's a they make it gold and they put a V on there and it's a coin, but it's just a string of numbers.
It's not a coin. It doesn't have any color. How much like research and homework have you done on that? And how do you really see it compared to gold? And I'm a true Bitcoiner there. I'm holding it down to zero. I'm going down with the ship like everybody else. We're here at Bitcoin 2025. I found Peter Ship on the floor.
Big gold bug. Big anti- Bitcoin man. First of all, I think it's fantastic you're here talking about Bitcoin, talking of Bitcoin is uh you've got a lot of critics in the industry. I want to take it back a long time. Tell us how how and when you first heard of Bitcoin and what you originally thought. Well, I first heard about it in 2010 when I was running for US Senate.
Uh, there were some people that were wanting to make donations to my campaign in Bitcoin. Uh, and some of my guys working on my campaign knew about Bitcoin, were kind of into it at the time. Uh, so they told me about it because they didn't have much money to buy it with. But I had money. Yeah. Um, and so I, you know, I I I could have taken a significant position.
Obviously, with the benefit of hindsight, I I should have. And sure, do I regret? because I thought seriously about buying it. Yep. Uh and I just didn't do it. And that was probably the main reason that I didn't buy it later cuz when it was around a dollar, I forget it was below a dollar or above a dollar.
And I thought about maybe throwing in 510 grand, maybe 50 or 100 grand. I thought about it, right? But then I didn't do it. And then I saw it take off. You know, it went up to like $1,000. I should have bought it. God, I could have made a lot of money. And then when it pulled back and it went for several years, it was 300, 400.
own fear. And some people I knew started buying and I found out some people that, you know, had hedge funds were buying it. And I'm like, you know, why are people buying this? And I thought, you know, maybe it's going to have another run. You know, it's probably going to go higher and if these guys are buying it, you know, more people could buy it.
And I was like, maybe I should buy it. And the mental block I couldn't get over was paying like $400 to buy something that I didn't want to buy at $4. Yeah. and not thinking that it could actually I mean go this high. I was like well where can it go 2,000? I mean I don't know. I didn't I didn't because I what if it goes to 200?
What if it goes to 100? Right. So I didn't buy it and then you know of course it it went way up. Uh but now you know I don't even consider it now. I mean, back then I thought about it, didn't do it, but at these kind of prices, I have absolutely no interest in it because there's so much more downside risk in my opinion uh than the upside potential.
And there's a lot of other things that I I would rather put my money in. And you know the interesting thing is that if you look at the peak from 2021 which is almost four years ago, Bitcoin is 10% lower priced in gold than it was then. despite all the ETFs and all the Bitcoin treasury companies and the strategic reserve and the Bitcoin ZAR and all the money and the Super Bowl ads and all the hype.
Um the market really hasn't gone off. You know, you look look at Micro Strategy, you know, the poster boy, you know, his average cost of Bitcoin is 70,000. I meanund, you know, 5,000 wherever we are. That's not much higher considering how much he bought to get it up here. Yeah. And if he as sale tried to get out, it wouldn't be 70,000.
It'd be lower. Yeah. You know, whereas he could have bought gold instead of Bitcoin. His unrealized gains would be relatively the same, but he could get out without moving the market. He's stuck. In fact, he has to buy every week to keep the market propped up. Yeah. When it comes to like Bitcoin and its value proposition and the protocol itself, how much like research and homework have you done on that?
And how do you really see it compared to gold? Obviously, you're a big gold bug. You believe in the value proposition of gold. Why don't you see Bitcoin as the same thing when there are very good resources out there that make a compelling argument for that? Well, I I don't see that it's anything like gold.
First of all, in the physical world, yeah, you know, you can't replace gold with Bitcoin, right? I can't I can't make jewelry out of Bitcoin. I can't conduct electricity with Bitcoin. So, you can't use it in aerospace, in consumer electronics, in medicine, um the way you can gold. So in the physical world, it's nothing like gold.
In the financial world, it's kind of the opposite of gold. There's a negative correlation. Bitcoin correlates with risk assets like tech stocks. Yeah. So if the NASDAQ is up big, chances are Bitcoin is up. Yeah. And gold is down. You can almost tell what Bitcoin is doing by looking at gold and vice versa.
when people are worried about stuff, when there's bad economic news, the markets are sinking, uh something's happening, where people want to take risk off, they buy gold, they sell their Bitcoin. So, if Bitcoin is the anti- gold in the investment world and it's nothing like gold in the physical world, then you know what has it got to do with gold?
It's digital gold is a fraud. I mean, they make Bitcoin look like gold when they draw it, right? It's a they make it gold and they put a, you know, the a bee on there and it's a coin, but it's just a string of numbers. It's not a coin. It doesn't have any color. So, I I think it's, you know, fool's gold.
I think they're trying to convince people to buy it instead of gold. But people should buy Bitcoin instead of, you know, some, you know, startup tech company that's got no earnings and, you know, hype or, you know, we're in Las Vegas. You can play blackjack, you could play craps, you can buy Bitcoin, right?
Those are the things that Bitcoin has something in common with. Y, it doesn't have anything in common with gold. No, it doesn't. I mean I I would counter that just to say that obviously proof of work the consensus mechanism requires you to expend energy and computational power to allow us to transact in a decentralized way without a centralized authority.
That's the value, right? Well, but the thing is proof of work doesn't really mean anything if the work doesn't result in value. If if I pay somebody to dig a hole and then I pay them to fill it back up again, there's been a lot of work, but I don't have anything to show for it. I haven't created anything.
I I've they've wasted the labor. So when you expend energy to produce a bitcoin to solve a mathematical equation that results in a bitcoin, you don't have anything other than that bitcoin which is really nothing. But you have you have a medium of exchange. I mean that for value, right? It's a decentralized way for us to pay each other and it needs to do the proof of work in order for that to everybody uses Bitcoin really as a mean of exchange cuz it's no good.
It's slow and not in America and Europe but in some small uh but even it's too expensive to use. It's too slow. But when you expend energy to mine gold, you have gold. You have a real tangible commodity that you could do stuff with. Yeah, but what you can also do with gold is use it as a medium of exchange.
And what people can do in these poor countries, if I tokenize gold and put it on the blockchain, people in poor countries can buy it and use it in ways that they can't use Bitcoin knowing that their gold is safely stored in Switzerland or Singapore or Dubai or Hong Kong. They can have a digital representation of that ownership and they can use it as a medium of exchange much better than Bitcoin.
they can they can actually make micro purchases that are prohibitively expensive to to make with Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. Uh you recently uh followed suit when the United States announced that they were going to adopt a Bitcoin reserve. You said, "Hey guys, I'm going to do the same experiment.
I'm setting up a proof of reserve." So technically, you're holding some Bitcoin. Talk process. What you think about the the thought experiment? Well, you know, well, they were they were making a big deal about the strategic reserve, but you know, Trump came out and said, "Yeah, we have the reserve, but we're not going to spend any money to fill it up." Yeah.
You know, so to the extent that we could find a budget neutral way at no cost to the taxpayers. And so I decided to have my own reserve under the same concept. So I created my Bitcoin reserve and I said, I will fill up this reserve as long as I don't have to spend any money. I'm not going to buy any Bitcoin.
But if I could find a way to get free Bitcoin, I'll do what the governor is doing. And you did, right? Some people I got a little bit. Yeah. You know, I got like a I don't know 5% of a Bitcoin, something like that. Okay. But I mean, it's still I I love that you did that because as someone who's hyperritical of Bitcoin, you went and did the thought experiment.
Well, and you know, I you know, the first one I had was on Coinbase. Yeah. And people sent money Bitcoin to it, but then it got moved by Coinbase and so people thought I was selling it. I said, "No, I'm not selling it. It's still there." Yeah. So then I transferred all that bitcoin or pay self custody.
I bought this tzor thing or whatever it was. Yeah. Transfer wallet. Yeah. Yeah. And so I and then I I put the Bitcoin there and then I put that address and say here's the strategic reserve so everybody can see it and make sure that I'm not selling any because it's all staying there. I'm because that's you know that's what the Bitcoin reserve is.
You you know you hold it y forever. And I'm a true Bitcoiner there. I'm holding it down to zero. I'm going down with the ship like everybody else. You realize you orange peeled yourself. I mean, when you announced it online, I was like, Peter, you orange pulled yourself. You literally, you did what everyone is wanting to see for a really long time.
But, um, now I'm here. I got to do the Heimer maneuver and like get that orange pill out of everybody. And how long that go? Unpill them. Maybe put a gold pill in there instead. You know, let's talk about gold versus Bitcoin right now. Like, um, these are very uncertain times we live in, right? Like Trump's tariffs really shook the markets.
people were very uncertain. There was talk of Bitcoin decoupling for a while. It it performed differently from tech stocks. That's what the the kind of talk of the town was. How important are gold? And I mean, I know you don't think Bitcoin is the same thing, but a lot of people see it as a risk. I I don't think it's decoupled from risk assets yet.
I think it's still highly correlated. I mean, Bitcoin did kind of bottom before the NASDAQ and then kind of rallied with it, but it really still is very negatively correlated to gold. Okay. And you know I think when gold makes a new high back above 3500 I expect Bitcoin to be lower than it is today not higher.
My last question to you uh say the hold a significant amount of gold. I think Paulo Ado has said that they hold about 50 tons of gold and they tokenized it. What do you think of the the convergence of blockchain and uh opening up gold markets? Well I think look that is a legitimate use of blockchain.
I think gold is probably one of the best assets to tokenize. Uh, you know, because the custody costs are relatively low. Uh, and it's very stable. Um, you know, I mean, whether I trust Tether as my custodian and I've always been very suspicious about Tether. You should meet Ko and he might change your mind.
But um yeah, I mean but but yeah, I mean but if I was going to buy a a an assetbacked token, I'd much prefer one backed by dollars than US treasuries. Especially since, you know, when you buy Tether, you don't get any of the interest on those treasuries. Tether keeps all that money, right? So you just take all the inflation risk without any of the offsetting interest income.
Tether just keeps all that income on somebody else. So Tether and all block stable coins, that's why the Trumps want in on the action. It is a windfall for the issuer of the token, but it's not a good deal for the buyer. Peter, thank you so much for your time. I I find it very interesting that you came into the den of the bigquires and uh you've done a great job at actually orange pilling a lot of people. So, thank you so much.
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