Topic: Peter Schiff on Bitcoin - page 15. (Read 38869 times)

Actually, this (misconception) points out very clearly why Bitcoin/Gold are on the same side opposite modern day fiat.

Modern day fiat monetary systems are almost all 'debt based'.  The currency is actually created by someone going into debt and extinguished by someone going out of debt through one means or another.  The paradox is that if there were not debt, there would be no money.  This explains, among other things, why pretty much everyone and every corporate and government is in debt.

Bitcoin and PM's (physically held) are not created this way.  They have no 'counter-party'.  Nobody can default and make the holder lose their value.

Peter Schiff debated Trace Mayer already, or had the chance, video:
http://fmtblog.com/?p=12141

You can choose as money what you want. It was always valued in debt and debt is backed by the law of the state mafia.
No state: no debt. No debt: no value of FIAT/Gold/Bitcoin.

People are calling Peter's show on bitcoin today.  I'll post later.  I'm really curious what Peter will say when he gets his "ah huh" moment.

Awesome! Eric Voorhees has been on the Peter Schiff Show.  This is going to be good.  I forwarded the link to Peter. He's responded to my messages (or his rep) before so I know he gets them.

Maybe this guy:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1qkqjr/peter_schiff_has_requested_a_bitcoiner_to_debate/cddt2c5

So who here (btc community) will step up and call his radio show and debate his position on bitcoin?  I can't do it, I suck.  I get it but I'll choke up on the air.  Who can best debate Peter?  Max Keiser?  Peter was just on Max's show in London.
http://youtu.be/MNXmL771mBA
 I'm sure Max would return the favor.

While that's a cute little retort, it's not actually true.  A great many people, both wealthy and otherwise, do use gold as money, or at least as a "store of value".  http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article43069.html

And India is far from the only group to continue to value gold for it's monetary properties.  The "western" nations are fairly unique in the total abandonment of hard currency principles in favor of ever increasing abstractions.  While the average, middle classs American adult has near zero experience with gold or silver coins, that's not true for the average, middle class Chinese adult or the average middle class South American adult.  There is a high, and perhaps even deserved, trust in the US federal reserver note as well as the Euro.  That trust can turn in an instant.

peter schiff is a smart guy but he is comparing apples to oranges when he compares bitcoin to gold. no one uses gold as money anymore.

the intrinsic value of fiat currency is the btu's you can extract when you burn it. (that is about 3-5% of our currency supply. the rest is just pixels on a screen. btw fiat is not money . money is defined by the US constitution as specie of gold and silver.
there have been over 3000 fiat currencies that have gone the way of the dodo

Man, Peter sound but-hurt.  I almost feel a little sorry for him.

The guy at least gets that 'one Bitcoin' is just a matter of setting a decimal point so he beats about 90% of people, but that's definitely a 'thinnest kid at fat camp' sort of a thing.  He has yet to put a little arithmetic into the problem though.

Yo, Pete:  Try this:

  Fiat: backed by law.
  Gold: backed by physics.
  Bitcoin: backed by mathematics.

Gold and Bitcoin are very similar when compared to fiat.

BTW, it is true that Bitcoin has all kinds of potential failure modes.  Any smart person will have a plan to diversify and stay diversified as we ride.  The trouble is that you clearly have no clue about what any of the failure modes are.  You should shut up about it and watch from the sidelines until you do or you will keep sounding like a jackass...mainly because you are being a jackass.

That's not what I'm talking about at all.  On that point, Peter is correct.  Bitcoin is not gold, but nor is it fiat.  It's something altogether new and different from either, that is designed to do the best job of either. 

What I'm talking about is Peter's talk about intrinsic value.  Not only is gold's "intrinsic value" such a small part of it's market value as to be practically irrelevent, he argues that bitcoin's don't have an intrinsic value economicly.  I can easily prove that they do.  The only kind of intrinsic value of anything, is how useful it is to the marketplace. While gold does have physical properties that are useful to industry, and silver has chemical properties useful to both industry and medicine; neither of these 'intrinsic' uses have value to the market to compete with their monetary uses, because the market will always be looking for methods of achieving the same ends using cheaper inputs.  A great example is the use of silver in antibacterial products; while it works great and has been well known to medicine for over a century, silver is not often used in medicine except in the most dire of applications, wherein our modern anti-bacterial sciences fail us too regularly.  I.E. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus  While bitcoins have no physical properties to exploit, they were designed to significantly uncut the market costs of the transfer of value over distances.  This 'feature' alone provides bitcoin's "intrinsic value", even if it's next least expensive competitor in kind is what most determines what that "intrinsic value" should actually be.  Neither Visa nor Western-Union have the power to undercut Bitcoin in this market, without first becoming Bitcoin themselves.

And that is not even considering the "intrinsic value" of blockchain enforcible digital contracts, should they ever become common.

http://youtu.be/0VrB1Ae3xqs

Well, that radio show completely undermines my own faith in Peter.

Nov 13, 2013 Peter is at the Money Show in New Orleans.  He opens his show talking about bitcoin.  I just put the whole show up.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21580995/PeterShiffShow.btc.11.13.13.mp3

Edit: Talk continues with callers at 1:13:20.

+1 Exactly. Well said. And Schiff is not alone. He is just one of many. There are plenty gurus who claim they are still right about their predictions, "but it just has not happened yet". That kind of advice is worse than useless. It makes me think about the "end of the world" folks who predict the rapture on some date, and then when it does not come, they argue that they were still right, but slightly premature on the date.  No different. And just as profitable for their followers.  

Peter 'failed loser' Schiff again:

  http://www.cnbc.com/id/101192216

edit:  Oops.  Didn't see the above.  Sorry.  Anyway, one has to wonder if Schiff has lost his customers more with his bets on the Euro or by talking them out of taking a BTC position an order of two of magnitude ago.

2013-11-12 on CNBC. "Bitcoin isn't gold 2.0 — it's tulip mania 2.0"
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101192216

Also mentioning how bitcoin is infinite because it's divisible. However, gold is also divisible and here's him advertising it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cNwaA5sNr8

I lost all respect for him. He's either stupid to talk about something he doesn't understand or he is lying.

You're techincally correct.  He's not literally borrowing dollars and selling them short. 

His thesis in 2008 revolved around 4 thing:


He was right about 1, wrong about 3, and lost huge.  His idea that the rest of the world would decouple and be immune to a US slowdown was wrong.  When the US gets in trouble, the rest of the world gets in more trouble.  The US does 20% of the world's manufacturing with only 4% of the world's population.  Find someone else to follow who isn't constantly wrong.
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/01/peter-schiff-was-wrong.html

The only reason that economists use the term 'intrinsic value' with regard to commodity based hard currencies is because there isn't really a better term in English.  It shouldn't be taken as a literal statement that gold or silver have value because of their scientific properties.  Gold and silver are valued by humans because of their particular scientific properties, but to what degree any particular person values those properties depends mostly upon what their own experiences and needs might be.