Bitcoin vs. Gold 

Bitcoin was around $700 when this video was uploaded.

Peter, you should have purchased a few BTC 7 years ago. This video will age amazingly well. Please never remove it as I plan on checking in every few years.

On this day (Nov 21, 2013) Bitcoin was worth $683 and Gold was worth just above $1,200 per ounce. Today Gold is right under $1,800 per ounce and Bitcoin is just above $50,000. Tell me again Peter if Bitcoin in 2013 was closer to the bottom or closer to the top? And what was the better investment?

I will be forever grateful to you, you changed my entire life and I will continue to preach on your behalf for the whole world to hear you saved me from huge financial debt with just a small investment, thank you Veronica Hoy.

Fiat money has no "intrinsic value" (as you call it) either. It became valuable by usurping the place of gold - by decree. This led eventually to a world monetary system of fiat which is controlled by governments and central banks. Bitcoin's target is this worldwide fiat money market, which represents tens of trillions in monetary value. Regardless of how badly the fiat system is run, almost all of the world's transactions take place daily in it. That's a tremendous market begging for competition. Bitcoin, not being a government, cannot issue a decree that BTC must be accepted by creditors in payment of a debt or must be paid to tax collectors, or has a denomination of X because we decree the value to be X. In order to compete, it had to first issue valueless tokens. That is exactly what fiat money is if you strip away government control of money and all their edicts which are backed by force. When enough interest was generated in this experiment, the tokens began to be traded by the miners for fiat money. Thus, the tokens became valuable for exchange. More and more people joined the experiment, willing to bet on the future value as well as the future utility of the token money. As the Bitcoin economy grew, companies sprang up to provide exchange and merchant services, among others. Bitcoin, since it has no recourse to coercion like governments, must bootstrap itself into a competitive niche against fiat money through a market process of price discovery and expanded adoption as a useful medium of exchange. Therefore the price volatility is par for the course. It could not be otherwise with a market-based alternative fiat currency like Bitcoin. Other alternative currencies can issue at par with the dollar or some other standard fiat money, but that requires a centralized issuer. Bitcoin was designed as a distributed network with no single point of failure. There is no Bitcoin company to be raided and shut down. It was purposely designed to not issue denominated currency backed by a single issuer. The issuer is the whole decentralized system which is governed by computer code. The humans involved have to follow this built-in logic in order for the system to work. Bitcoin is in its early adoption period, and requires speculators who are willing to bet, based on its merits, that it will gain market share and hence value from the world's fiat currencies. The limited issue of 21 million assures that once market equilibrium is reached, Bitcoin cannot be devalued. Sincere investors/backers as well as profit-seeking speculators and miners all participate in this price discovery process while the Bitcoin economy expands. It is not possible to have instantaneous market share or instantaneous equilibrium price against all the other currencies in the world. This process takes time. Money will be made and lost along the way. Similar to how precious metals first went from valued commodies to money, Bitcoin must go from a promising alternative currency to an effective established one. This can only happen, given the design of the system, through a speculative adoption phase.

1. "Doesn't cost you anything to store Bitcoin"- If you don't go through due diligence and store your Bitcoin in cold storage with encryption, you risk someone stealing them from your online wallet just like I risk someone stealing my Gold if I leave it in my front lawn. 2. "Bitcoin has no intrinsic value"- It might not have "intrinsic value" in the sense that gold has, but its "relative" value arising from properties such as anonymity, decentralized system of clearance, cryptographic trust, predetermined and defined rate of growth, built in deflation, divisibility, low transaction fees, etc which are inherent to the Bitcoin system is far greater than Gold in what is the Information Age. 3. "There is nothing behind Bitcoin"- The mining hardware whose sole purpose is to run the calculations to secure the Bitcoin system contains a combined computational power of almost 5 petahashes. I would say that is a pretty strong backing. 4. "The government only accepts dollars for payment of taxes"- I can't pay my taxes in AAPL shares either. But I can exchange those shares to dollars just as I can exchange my Bitcoin for dollars to pay taxes. 5. "You dont know what Bitcoins are going to be worth next week"- I'm sure you can say the same with Gold. Who knows what the price of Gold will be next week, next year, in 5 years? 6. "People are buying Bitcoin because they think the price is gonna go up." True. The market is full of speculators looking to make a quick buck by buying low selling high, there are speculators everywhere. Not only do I wish they go up in price, but also hold Bitcoin because it is "Programmable Money". Who knows what programmers will be able to do with this? Imagine only being able to connect 21 millions devices in the world together through the internet, I'm sure people would value those connections highly. Gold is great, but in the coming explosion of people entering the Internet during the next decade, cryptocurrencies will play a huge part in how people exchange value.

The intrinsic value of Bitcoin are all of the improvements you mentioned it has over gold. There's value in a secure public ledger, there's value in decentralization, there's value in payment processing, there's value in having complete control over your own wealth. How can you begin listing all of Bitcoins improvements on gold, and not recognize its value!

Best advice ever I never purchased any btc 8 years ago. ❤ you saved me peter I bought gold. 🥰

This has aged well

Schiff is correct. Many Bitcoin enthusiasts are well-intentioned and otherwise shrewd libertarians. I like them and respect them. Unfortunately, they are dangerously deluded on this particular issue. They cite the Austrian economic precept that "There is no such thing as intrinsic value." Austrian economics, which argues for "subjective value" does indeed say that. But Bitcoin enthusiasts are misinterpreting its implications. Gold (and silver) as Schiff correctly notes, are "luxury commodities." This provides them with a "value floor." Come hell or high water, they will always be worth something. They will never be worth nothing. Bitcoin does not have this. Bitcoins are merely electronic IOUs. They are warehouse receipts without anything in the warehouse to back them up. They are worth nothing at all. Zero. Zilch. Zip.

I'm still an agnostic on the bitcoin issue, but props to Peter for taking all the heat for criticizing it. It's an interesting debate we libertarians should be having.

Someone needs to record this because I have a feeling peter will totally deny that he was totally wrong on bitcoin in the future.

Jesus Peter your knew about bitcoin 7 years ago🤣

Yes, the price it's gonna drop like it did in the past. Did you notice that each cycle goes higher??? That is an adoption curve, not a bubble.

Aah the video that dissuaded me from buying BTC at $300. Luckily got in not long after but damn Schiff thanks for the advice.

I think Peter just sold me on Bitcoins

A language like english is a value to people. Bitcoin is a language for digital value transactions. Something dont need to have "intrinsic-value" (whatever that is) to be a value. Bitcoin will kill gold because Bitcoin is more useful then gold in a digital age. Gold is not practical for shopping. Bitcoin is.

Peter you fail to see that the Bitcoin system a as a whole has value. It makes certain economic activities possible that weren't possible before. It's not gold but it has it's own strengths. I would advice for people to invest about 1 to 5 percent of their capital in Bitcoin. You are so biased because you have an interest in gold. Its up to the market to value the bitcoin system. Its so easy to say its a bubble because every new great thing results in one. You couldnt see the bubble in gold in 2011. Gold and Bitcoin are great. Own both, the latter as the more speculative one.

i'll keep my gold

Typically the vast majority of comments on this channel are in agreement with Peter's views. The fact that so many of the comments on this video disagree with Peter makes me think he is wrong on Bitcoin.

The free market will sort it out eventually.

"You knew if you didn't want gold somebody else would. This is its intrinsic value" "The only reason anyone wants bitcoins is because they believe someone else wants them" I see no difference here....

Bitcoin is 49k now while gold is...

the main benefit of bitcoin is the low transaction fees. Bitcoin will not replace the dollar because the government will demand you pay your taxes in dollars. Bitcoin is more of a competitor to paypal, credit cards and banks as a way of transacting your money.

The average investor doesn't care about what someone else can do with gold. They care about decentralized, digital, trustless, useful money that they can actually spend and make interest on. Let's compare what an average investor can do with their gold vs what they can do with their bitcoin: Bitcoin 1. You can make good interest on bitcoin. 2. You can use bitcoin as collateral. 3. You don't have to worry about huge chargeback fees from the stuff you sell online. 4. You pay bitcoin's tiny transaction fees instead of Paypal's massive fees. 5. You can donate to anyone in the world and you don't have to worry about it getting blocked, like when people use Patreon. 6. You get your money fast instead of waiting 3-5 business days. 7. You get to be your own bank so no more worrying about bail ins, bail outs, bank runs, bank holidays, banking hours, and long bank wait times. 8. You can go anywhere in the world with as much money as you want without the government bugging you. 9. You can send money 24/7/365 with no downtime at all. 10. You can sleep easily knowing that bitcoin is unseizable, immune to corruption, and has an unchangable stock to flow. Gold 1. Paperweight

Nice to see a proper comment on this issue. I was previously quite positive towards Bitcoin, but a proper breakdown like this leaves me sceptical. I'll be the last to adopt this currency, but I hope dearly that it takes foothold in the general population. They've been fooled for so long by the central banks, so why not this? It would solve a lot of problems. But in the end like Peter Schiff says regular value backed currencies would kill any fiat currency. The problem is neither banks or governments have any interest in delivering this service, and nobody else has the power. So perhaps a shadow bank, some cryptoanarchist conglomerate, could some day grow large enough to be trusted so that people could use their currency. That would finally be the true end of our sham economy.

A 1g Diamond (5ct) = 100,000$ 1g Gold = 40$ 1g Weed = 10$ 1g Copper = 0.7c 15g Oil = 1c 45g Wheat = 1c 150g Coal = 1c Diamonds and Coal are both made of Carbon.

Peter if Gold was valued at its "intrinsic value" (a flawed concept but I'll go with it so to answer you with your own "arguments"), it would not be worth 10% of what's it's worth today. You think people are buying gold telling themselves "at worst I lose 90%" or I'll make necklaces with my gold! People are buying gold because it worked as a store of value in the past. Not because of any intrinsic value. There is nothing to stop Bitcoin building the same reputation and to act as a store of value. Now the big difference is that people are actually buying and selling goods and service in Bitcoin TODAY. They already outnumber people buying and selling goods and service in GOLD. Points me to a single Subway where you can buy your sandwich in gold ! Truth is your whole business depends on gold, a huge part of your net worth is in gold. And you are afraid. You prefer to lie to yourself (I'm sure you believe what you say) rather than face the truth. I own gold, not everyone has entered the internet age already. Internet is too complicated, too far for some people from older generations or people in certain parts of the world. I'm not going to sell my gold. I actually think they are ways Bitcoin and gold could be used together. But everyone who owns gold and is technologically savvy enough should also own bitcoin. Bitcoin actually makes much more sens to go with gold than silver. Gold and Bitcoin share the same goals relative to Fiat currencies. You would better realize this quick. I can also tell you that you are quickly ruining your reputation among technology savvy people. If one understands how wrong you are on Bitcoin, it's hard to give any credibility to anything else you will have to say. That's a shame because outside of Bitcoin you are right on things.

Also, he keep saying value. It has use, and thus it has value. I do not understand this intrinsic value he is talking about when I am a software engineer. It has value, as it has a use. I take it google is useless, and has no value. People cannot wear google, or hold it. What is he talking about? Google is a software tool that allow people to exchange information more easily. Bitcoin is a software tool that allow people to exchange goods and services more easily. That is Bitcoin value.

Peter, can u stop comparing Bitcoin to gold and judge Bitcoin on its own merits and unique properties? No one says you should go all-in into Bitcoin. Just 1% of your savings in Bitcoin would already be a great hedge against a wide range of financial disasters.

He's missing the entire point. Bitcoin's VALUE is in its cutting edge technology. Intrinsic value does not have to be something you can hold or make into a watch. Its value is the Bitcoin network.

Bitcoins? great for getting people young and old to become financial literate because we all know from the last 5 years just whose interests banks and governments have when the going gets tough. I did economics decades ago and forgot it all coz I had good gigs savings, stocks and got hammered, bit coins have made me start to read up again and become financially literate for myself

I'm still confused on intrinsic value of gold.

The Bitcoin is really pretty badass. It has no regard for any other currency whatsoever.

Nothing has intrinsic value, even gold.

Why does can't this guy (which I respect) connect the dots? The "intrinsic value" of Bitcoin comes from it's network, and it's ability to send transactions cheaply and quickly without the use of a 3rd party. Why can't he wrap his head around this???? Just because you can't take a Bitcoin and make an actual coin out of it, or use it to build part of a cell phone, doesn't mean it has no value!

Gold never had any intrinsic value as a metal until modern times and it was still valuable simply because it was rare and people believed in its value. If another metal was found with better intrinsic properties than gold, it would still have value. I believe the stage we're in with bitcoin is the same as gold once was before we actually found a practical industrial use for it as a metal

You cannot convince a caveman that the pen is mightier than the sword.

- BTC crashing to 10k - Look at me, I was right!!! - BTC still 1000% proffit.. Ok Boomer

Gold has intrinsic value. Bitcoin does not. Bitcoin's only value is as a trendy alternative to current fiat systems. Take away government currency mandates and allow for a truly free market in which currencies can compete and Bitcoin loses all relevance and value. Bitcoin is almost necessarily a black market currency because it's primary value is as an alternative fiat currency that is - for now - more difficult to track and tax. In a free market no rational person is going to trade real wealth (gold, etc.) for fiat currencies or Bitcoin.

I always laugh when young people say they want a gold standard. My first question is always do you own gold? They say no most the time without even understanding they would be dead broke the instant that happened. Let me tell you the real history of a gold standard, it is the way bankers steal the wealth from the people. First they start with gold and silver as the means of exchange, next they issue paper notes backed by gold, next they devalue the paper you hold against gold, next they take gold away totally collapsing the system into hyperinflation. The people cry for a gold standard once again as they have forgotten how the game started in the first place. This process takes 80-180 years and has been going on over 1000 years. Paper money was invent by the Chinese. Silver was the main currency of china trading 8 oz of silver to 1 oz of gold. China is the worlds #1 creditor, China accepts bitcoin as payment for homes, cars, food, rent and everything else. The price of bitcoins is moving up and down rapidly as we witness the first free market in our lives. As an economic historian I can tell you volatility is the normal and low to no price fluctuations is a controlled system. America is not driving the price of bitcoins China and Russia are. Also most will not be able to capitalize on the great rise in gold and silver due to the paper markets collapse leads to no markets in silver or gold. When the gold runs out the system will collapse into hyperinflation most of these gold and silver sellers will not let you in on this piece of info. Only 1% of dollars are in cash as the banks will meltdown and bail-in on the citizens. You must divest yourself of the gold and silver before the last leg of the crisis. Gold and silver will be accepted as a currency no doubt about that but just like it is now they prefer digital currencies due to transportation costs and weight.

A digital currency cannot be backed by gold, because the gold behind it will be in centralized locations, which will be confiscated. See e-gold.

bitcoin is capped at 21 million... but the number of cryptocurrencies that can be created is unlimited

His view is warped by the fact that he owns gold but doesn't own any Bitcoin.

This is awesome. A decade old clip. Peter is awesome!

Gold is analog, bitcoin is digital.

Sheldon: "I have the Sword of Azeroth! I am the Sword Master!" Raj: "He's selling it on eBay." Sheldon: "Wait, someone just clicked _Buy It Now_ ." Howard: "I am the Sword Master!" That's Bitcoin.

OK, this is the key to this whole argument...its semantics. Instead of using the word "value" you should use the words "utility" and "price". Gold has both utility and a price, so does bitcoin. The utility (why I would want gold) and the utility of bitcoin overlap. They are both scarce, fungible, durable and hard to counterfeit. Gold has the additional utility of great conductivity, and history. Bitcoin has the added value of being easy to store and transport, being decentralized (which gold has if you actually have physical gold at home) and being pseudonymous (ditto for gold if physical). The key difference is that people are conflating not only the term "value" but also not appreciating the difference between physical gold and paper gold. Bitcoin solves a lot of the issues that caused paper gold to exist, due to the inconvenience/friction of physical gold

Schiff is correct. Bitcoins and other e-currencies are just that, currencies. They may be somewhat better than fiat currencies because they are private sector currencies. But they are still not money. Bitcoins, like FRNs, are mediums of exchange, and only mediums of exchange. Nothing more. Money, by contrast, is a THING that has value for reasons other than being a medium of exchange. Even if people were to cease using gold, silver, or copper as a medium of exchange, it would still have value as a raw material. Bitcoins are not money. If people cease using Bitcoins as a medium of exchange, they will become totally worthless, like every fiat currency that has ever existed in history.

Peter, it's not "intrinsic value", it's "non-monetary value". There's no such thing as "intrinsic value", as the founder of Austrian economics Carl Menger stated, "value is therefore nothing inherent in goods, no property of them, but merely the importance that we first attribute to the satis- faction of our needs".

Even though he seems well informed about Bitcoin, there are many contradictions: 1.) If gold was really mostly used for its intrinsic value, why was is then stored at a gold smith's safe. Furthermore, since the global amount of gold cannot be verified by everyone, more bank notes can be printed (which was done as history showed) as gold exists. With Bitcoin I can always verify the global amount and have full control over it, not through worthless sheets of paper but by direct control. Additionally, what people need to understand and why I think Bitcoin is especially important, is that for a government it was only possible to finance big wars by breaking the gold standard. With Bitcoin this cannot happen, since we have no need for a centralized authority to issue sheets of paper or numbers in an intransparent bank database as we have today. 2.) About the volatility. I'm 100% sure, that if the use of gold as form of currency was first used a few years ago, its volatility would be also enormous.

I don't understand what you mean when you say "Bitcoins can't be used as money". I just bought a laptop with bitcoins the other day. The laptop was delivered to my house a few days later. One property of bitcoin that gold cannot replicate is instant transfer around the world. Also, it does cost to store bitcoins. Storing the private keys in a secure location is not necessarily easy.

Seems like a great way to divert attention from metals so they can be bought at knock down prices.

Peter Schiff doesn't seem to understand that Bitcoin *does* have more intrinsic value than gold. Being able to encrypt money against theft, bring it on you everywhere in the world, invisibly, being able to send money overseas, being able to share ownership of money with complex contracts, etc. are very useful features of a payment system. Also, Bitcoin money supply is even more predictable than gold. We don't live in the past, we live in the present. Gold is only worth because of its history and because it is scarse, but it can barely be used as money today and most people can't do anything of it, there's few industries using gold and nothing really backs the price. In short, gold is pure speculation too and the only advantage it has over Bitcoin his its established position.

Sorry Peter, i disagree with you on this one. Gold has some intrinsic value because it can be used in industry and jewellry but that only represents a small part of the gold price. The most important reason why the gold price is relativly high is becausee people think it has value and that somebody else will want it. If you'd take away that from gold the price would probably go down to the level of silver, which physically is similar to gold. The monetary aspect of gold could very well be replaced by bitcoin.

Does the intrinsic value argument extend to folks accepting Bitcoin as payment for goods and services? If so, it shouldn't matter that it's not shiny. If the general population desires Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, is this not the only thing that actually matters?

Peter, I'm a big fan but I don't think you see the whole picture. 1) Bitcoin is not meant to be Gold 2.0. Take your mind off gold for a minute. Bitcoin and other crypto currencies are a new unique asset class, with unique properties, leveraging the power of the block chain, a decentralized time-stamped database, secured by the collective computing power of all its 'miners'. 2) Gold certificates or gold-backed e-currencies would not be immune from the abuses of fractional reserve banking and/or bullion-bank runs. Also, there's an overhead in making sure the gold you're getting is not counterfeit. A Bitcoin wallet balance on the other hand is instantly verifiable and authenticated by the strength of the ever-growing network. Search youtube for "Andreas Antonopoulos" to see some insightful and intellectually honest interviews on Bitcoin and other crypto currencies.

Why do you believe products have value but not services? Bitcoin DOES have value... it's value is in it's utility and decentralization. Two things that's not built into gold like it is with Bitcoin.

If you bought $5000 worth of gold when this video was made 5 years ago. You would be up about 15% right now. If you bought $5000 worth of bitcoin you’d be retiring right now, Peter could not have been more wrong in this video and it actually completely discredit everything about him unfortunately you almost wonder how he can even show his face in public after making this video

For once, I don't share Peter's view. First, only a fraction of gold is being held for a real-world use in jewellery or elsewhere. So is bitcoin. Second, yes, people hold bitcoin to spend it at a later date, but not as an investment to dump all at once. If only a fraction of the world's M3 would be converted to bitcoin, its price would rise by a multiple of today's price. Third, in order to use bitcoin for commerce, no one needs to be exposed to fluctuations in price. One can just use it for executing payment transactions and then immediately sell it, avoiding any price swings. Peter needs to update his knowledge of bitcoin.

he always tries to sell you gold,feels like he has gold

Peter Schiff you are completely wrong. Please read Carl Menger on intrinsic value. Read the water vs diamond paradox. You are making the same mistakes Mises made. Nothing has intrinsic value in and of itself. People assign value based on the marginal utility of an object. You are making huge errors sir.

If you had bought heaps of bitcoin when this video was posted, you'd be rich today.

3 years and 2.5 months later gold price is the same when this video is published.

Intrinsic value is nonsense Put yourself on an island with only two people and one has a bottle of water and the other has a bar of gold. what has value? The value is given by the person, not the object. RU-vid then must not be worth anything, air must be worthless too. Value is DERIVED by humans, not objects.

Sticking with bitcoin. Gold is a waste of time.

Thank you Peter for allowing us to finally hear about bitcoins from a person who knows what he is talking about :)

Love everything Peter says, and he could be right about this. But something tells me that since his euro pacific business sells "precious metals", he's scared that the Bitcoin will take over his business and become the new thing.

Peter Schiff, I think that the intrinsic value found in Bitcoin does not come from its ease of use (As in being able to transfer it easily and quickly) but in the lack of a central point of the authority issuing it. Bitcoin is worth something because we know that it is not created from thin air and that its issuance is predictable. Unlike Bitcoin, Gold production can "end" tomorrow or maybe double. we have no idea how much gold exists underground. but we know exactly how many Bitcoins exist. In that sense, Bitcoin is more stable. Bitcoin can not be destroyed, that is also something to consider.

The intrinsic value of Bitcoin is it's convenience in facilitating transactions at a distance better than anything ever created before. People value convenience. It's the basis of our economy. Convenience is the only thing people value anymore. That is why bitcoin will take off.

1) Bitcoin is things gold isn't - Namely a transaction network amongst others. 2) There is value in data, and arguably intrinsic value in extremely hard won cryptographic proofs. 3) Comparing bitcoins to tulips is stupid - tulips are infinitely replicable and easily damaged and destroyed. 4) The volatility in bitcoin is a necessary growing pain if it's going to work, that's impossible to dispute.

What makes Gold Money is that ... it has intrensic value. What intrensic value does Gold have in Fort Knox? What use does it have in a vault?

Peter why no more bitcoin videos? was Peter Schiff wrong? Lol

They don't "create" bitcoin, they are already there and a limited supply.

Advantages of bitcoin: -Decentralized system allows you to own the asset yourself on a piece of paper or in your head. Gold must be stored through the vault so the keepers have your gold not you. -Bitcoin can be mined by anyone. As prices go up if bitcoin becomes mainstream and computer processing become cheaper, anyone can start mining. -Transaction fraud is impossible with bitcoin. Chargebacks are impossible with bitcoin. -Gold can become inflated if a new source of the element is discovered. Bitcoin will make gold look like rocks!

Lets remember how long he has been wrong

Peter, you could take the vast majority of what you said in this video and replace 'bitcoin' with 'gold' and it would be equally true.

I'm a little surprised at how few people understand the concept of intrinsic value and why Bitcoins haven't any. Take away a Bitcoin's ability to be traded and it becomes worthless. A dollar bill has more intrinsic value than a Bitcoin that is artificially valued at $600, because a dollar bill has worth beyond it's arbitrary value as a currency. You see, you can burn a dollar bill. It can be used as a fuel to keep you warm because ultimately, it's just paper. Bitcoins, ultimately, are just 1s and 0s on an anonymous hard drive. They have NO use beyond the artificial one they were intended for. You can't eat them, you can't burn them and you can't hammer them into pleasing shapes. They are nothing but representations of value and not valuable in and of themselves. Now go ahead and feel free investing in Bitcoins if you want. Just understand what it is you're buying. Don't assign it a level of value that doesn't exist and can't EVER exist.

was wondering if you think silver is just as reliable as gold? Because i cant afford gold i have been thinking about buying bullion silver... your thoughts on this would be highly appreciated

Gold can't be traded over an electronic system in a matter of seconds.

Peter: I've been a Schiff Radio subscriber, a libertarian, and financial follower of yours for quite some time now. That being said, it sounds like you haven't done nearly enough research on Bitcoin to really provide any opinions on it. I respect your financial and economics opinions greatly and you as a passionate person for politics, but I just plain don't think you understand how the p2p cryptocurrency protocol works. Cryptocurrencies are the best solution we have right now for sound currencies, as gold is so heavily regulated it's completely out of the question at this point. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies using the p2p protocol are the only decentralized currencies that are incredibly difficult to regulate by design. (Even if cryptocurrencies were outlawed, people would still be able to trade with them) Peter, you keep on advocating for a gold based digital currency, but that would be impossible, as governments would shut it down just like they did with e-gold, the liberty dollar, etc... Plus, if it were a gold-based digital currency, it wouldn't be decentralized because an individual or government would need to have the gold in possession. I want you to understand how revolutionary the bitcoin protocol is. You're comparing it to the tech bubble, when in reality you should be comparing it to the http protocol. Peter, you should be EXCITED for something like this to come out. It solves many many problems with fiat money. There's a reason why so many libertarians are moving their gold position to Bitcoin. Besides all this, the fact is that, whether you like it or not, cryptocurrencies are here to stay. There's a reason why they've been exploding over the last few months. People want a currency that the government can't touch. This is it.

He says those who have bitcoin have an interest in promoting it to boost its value, just like someone who has a lot of gold would, its just the same thing, peter has a lot of gold so pushes gold. I'm sure he would push bitcoin if he was an early adopter. However he does have some very valid points that you cannot dismiss. People are hording them right now, nobody really wants to spend something that tomorrow could be worth more and when the price is falling, will retailers accept them? He is right about all those miners who have in excess of 10,000-100,000 bitcoins stashed away, if they all decided to sell the price would be zero in seconds. I believe the infamous "Satoshi Nakamoto" has around 110,000 bitcoins in his wallet, anonymous and waiting for a time to cash out? I'm all for a decentralised banking system though this does have huge risks for anybody coming in now.

Peter, (I'm a longtime fan). In a complete 180 from what I would expect from Peter Schiff, it doesn't seem like you are thinking clearly on this subject matter. 1. Gold has intrinsic value because it's atomic structure makes it one of the most stable substances in the universe. It outlasts everything else. It's the substance of kings. Austrian theory says this commodity will rise to the top and be used as "money". Remember that Austrian school says "money" is actually a commodity. Bitcoin has the same property in that, being mathematical, it can potentially last forever. I don't buy your "intrinsic value" argument at all. 2. You're argument that the "bottom will drop out of the market" when all the Bitcoin "hoarders" decide to "cash out" is not cogent. What you are not considering is that Bitcoin is a currency. When someone decides to "cash out" of Bitcoin, they can SPEND their Bitcoin on actual products. They don't have to convert to dollars first because BITCOIN IS A CURRENCY that merchants accept. If everyone spends their Bitcoins on a house, or a car, a computer, or a pizza, this does NOT cause "the bottom to drop out of the market" as the Bitcoin price would stay stable because no Bitcoins would be converted to a different currency. You keep saying "people will want out of their Bitcoins" assuming that everyone will want back in to a fiat currency. What is so hard to understand about the fact that you can CURRENTLY actually SPEND Bitcoin on actual goods and this will not in any way lower the value of the currency? 3. There are many complicating factors. I personally believe that Bitcoin will not be the ultimate crypto currency for technical reasons. I can't discuss all the ideas here. If you ever wanted to have a conversation, ping me.

8:22 "bitcorns" pete schiff is such a troll

Watching this new year's Day 2021, BTC $29600

Fallacy! "You don't know the price of bitcoin in 5 years, or 10 years nobody knows" Go ahead Peter tell me the price of anything in 2023.

Wait, so I still don't get it? Ultimately, what is gold's intrinsic value beyond it being a good currency?

I am a supporter of bitcoins, but bitcoins are clearly not gold. I would like to see bitcoins work in conjunction with gold.

Peter Schiff did you change your mind about bitcoin? As of today 6-15-2016 Bitcoin is at $730. It went up by $273 since the last month

Well said Peter Schiff :)

Ram memory used to be as good as gold back in 1990. It was scarce, easy to transport and was universally desired. I traded it for everything from cash to a new 6 to one header and a supertrap. Good as gold until it wasn't.

This is like saying that the internet has no intrinsic value. The instant and easy transportation of information has value. An instant and global ledger of transactions, with the ability to embed contracts, place clauses on the release of funds, and built in support for dispute resolution is value. So in the bitcoin system, if you want to take advantage of that value, you need to come in possession of some bitcoin, which are very scarce.

Peter has gone back on his argument about bitcoin divisibility because he thought he could sling some bullshit and it would stick. In a world of math, it won't. He should just admit he's worried a lot of Gold investors will switch to bitcoin. I can tell you this, what he's really doing is downplaying bitcoin, for now and once he's moved enough money into it, he'll suddenly have a revelation about it. Always trust the money and never the man. What does he have to gain from saying what he's saying.

I find it very interesting that you grasped so well the propierties of bitcoin and yet decided that it has not intrinsic value. You said Gold has intrinsic value because people wanted it "for what it is" and the different ways gold can be used, but what "is" gold? if you take out all the propierties that bitcoin has as well, you said it yourself "Gold it's a luxury" and therefore is not really needed for anything, it's desirability it's based solely on the idea that someone wants to hold that specific luxury and do nothing with it, is having a shiny piece metal lying on your vault really worth the total market cap of gold? No. Yes it's used on industry, but what percentage of all existing gold without considering luxury uses is needed for industry? 4%? 10%? Then please devaluate gold by 90%-96%, until we find we can replace gold with other cheaper element, then devaluate gold by 100%. What makes gold really desirable to hold are all the propierties that bitcoin copy, and in fact, bitcoin does better, gold really stoped being simply a luxury and became important to the world when it became a way to account for wealth, and bitcoin does it better. Your point of view is very well structured and valid but i still think you got it wrong with bitcoin. And no, i do not own hundreds of bitcoins.

Oh Peter Peter, I've learned a lot from you, let me return the favor. I'd like to say that I think you did your homework, and I'm really happy to hear some non-bullshit criticism. Digital gold or gold 2.0 is a good, but not perfect analogy, so don't get too stuck with that. Most bitcoin people still love gold. Do you believe that RU-vid has any value? Or Google? Or Twitter maybe(sic)? I mean yes there are big companies behind them, but the product is something intangible, that makes people life easier. We store a lot of value in digital form nowadays and it's only increasing over time (music, movies, books, software and so on). There is no doubt that if you treat it as an investment it is still a high risk one, unlike gold. But hardly anybody argues with that. We also do not know if it will be around in 4 years. But many people really want that to happen, and money and value is all about what people want. Argument with dollar having value because I can only pay taxes in dollar, yeah we both know that's pretty much all the value that there is to it, but more and more businesses are accepting bitcoin only. Would you say that if I want to use them then bitcoin has value to me? "Somebody can come up with other digital currency backed by gold. That's not hard to do." That's actually the only thing that's absolutely wrong in your talk. The key thing with bitcoin is that it is decentralized. If have an idea how to make a digital *decentralized* currency backed up by gold then you owe something great to the world. Volatility, just like charge-backs can be easily handled by abstraction layers on top of bitcoin. It's an unregulated market , there's a lot of speculation, it is a bumpy ride, but I think value is in what people want. I know what I want.

I posted a text response to this video on /r/bitcoin seen here: pay.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1r6mrm/a_response_to_peter_schiffs_bitcoin_vs_gold_video/ The main crux of my argument is that if the dollar has value due to the fact that you have to pay taxes in it, then bitcoin has value because merchants are bound to offer discounts thanks to the savings compared to credit cards. The only way to pay taxes is with dollars, and the only way to get a surefire discount from an online merchant will be bitcoin. I'd love to hear a response from Peter on this point.

Peter Schiff forgot to say that gold is easy to confiscate and bitcoin isn't. But gold is fisical and bitcoin you need internet...

I disagree with the premise that gold is a better "store-of-value" than bitcoin simply because it has intrinsic value. Only 1.2% of the mined gold is used for various physical applications (jewelry and electronics mostly). The remaining 98.8% is hidden away in vaults never seen or used by humans, having no intrinsic value, just like bitcoin. So in your nightmare (or dream?) scenario where global currencies suddenly begin to collapse, will your typical gold investor be able to withdraw his/her share? Maybe, but with bitcoin, this would not be an issue, because each user already has physical possession of their bitcoin.

Peter do you ever get tired of being wrong?

Good speech. But he is omitting a few points for a fair comparison: 8:38-9:08 He misses to mention bitcoin payment processors like bitpay.com or bips.me which eliminate all price volatility risks for the merchants. Also one has to point out that bitcoin has added value (utility) over gold or money: you don't need to be "banked" to participate in trade. You don't need to be worried to get bitcoin stolen or confiscated if you apply right practices. Escrow services support is built into the bitcoin protocol. Overall, calling bitcoin "gold 2.0" is certainly oversimplistic, because all of gold, bitcoin (and fiat money) have their particular advantages, so there is certainly a justification for existence for all of them. One cannot call gold (or money) the better Bitcoin, just like one cannot call bitcoin the better gold.