Anyone dare listen to this Schiff Peterson podcast?
Discussion
I think we tend to be a bit too abusive to Schiff, he's an old sound money guy and has sat on gold mountain (much bigger than bitcoin mountain) for a long time, he's not stupid, he's just out of touch. I just listened to it, and I think his argument is premised on gold having value in its use for jewelry and conductors etc. I think he accurately points to a lack of bitcoin native markets, although I think his point that bitcoin isn't a store of value and is instead a speculative asset would need further investigation; true in some serious sense, but missing that gold has had thousands of years to seek a price that can be defined as a store of value, whereas bitcoin is barely getting into adolescence.
It might be reasonable to say the lack of liquidity for bitcoin hurts its store of value argument, if I needed to pay someone under the table to smuggle me out of a hostile country on a boat then gold may be more reliable for the time being. Hopefully time tells us that bitcoin finds the same global ubiquity.
Does Peterson push Bitcoin at all?
In other interviews he has more or less said that bitcoin maxis have an excellent point about the value of sound money, and that bitcoin has a lot of answers to the problems gold has. In this interview he questioned Schiff on bitcoin specifically, in addition to the possibility of a gold backed crypto. Schiff responded that he believes a gold backed crypto would be smart, but didnt elaborate on a consensus mechanism and admitted that it would require trust, defending his position by arguing that advanced economies require trust.
Schiff also admitted that bitcoin is the only crypto that has succesfuly replicated the monetary properties of gold, saying its flaw is that it can't be used in manufacturing and jewelry, and thus lacks a natural demand outside of a belief or social construct that it can be used as money.