The arch-bitcoin (BTC) skeptic Peter Schiff has said that BTC’s actual price is much lower than what we’re currently seeing, that it will drop significantly more, and that bitcoin mania is “over”.
Last week, in a Twitter thread, Schiff shared his opinion on recent Grayscale’s bitcoin trust (GBTC) performance, focusing on the net asset value (NAV), and what that means for the price of bitcoin.
And according to him, it means that BTC is trading “well below” $10,000 already.
“I think this is the real price of Bitcoin, as when you sell GBTC you get paid real cash. But when you sell BTC you get paid Tether. To get actual cash for Bitcoin you must accept a huge discount.”
As expected he was (again) heavily criticized for his posts by the crypto community, some of which jokingly claimed that Schiff himself is a BTC buyer looking for sellers. Others are ‘begging’ the crypto critic to let them know when and where they can buy BTC below $10,000.
That said, Schiff continued urging people to abandon the world’s most popular crypto, saying:
“GBTC is trading at a 46% discount now. New record. Something is definitely going on. Bitcoin is in real trouble. Get out while you can!”
He went on to discuss possible reasons behind the lower NAV, saying that GBTC may have loaned out its bitcoin and the borrower can’t repay the loan, or the BTC was stored with a custodian who lost it – but that the NAV could be “really a lot lower.”
On their side, cryptoasset manager Grayscale Investments stated on Friday that “the laws, regulations, and documents that define Grayscale’s digital asset products prohibit the digital assets underlying the products from being lent, borrowed, or otherwise encumbered.”
All digital assets that underlie Grayscale’s digital asset products, it added, are stored under the custody of Coinbase Custody Trust Company, stating that:
“To be perfectly clear: the BTC underlying Grayscale Bitcoin Trust are owned by GBTC and GBTC alone.”
And in their announcement on this topic, the company claimed that,
“Custody of the digital assets underlying Grayscale’s digital asset products is unaffected, and our products’ digital assets remain safe and secure. “
More to come
Schiff also looked back on one of his older BTC-related tweets, saying that it didn’t take long for his prediction to come true. The tweet in question, posted in July, argued that the need to sell BTC would worsen as the recession deepens and as “many HODLers lose their jobs, especially those working for soon to be bankrupt blockchain companies.”
But, Schiff claimed on Thursday,
“The lion’s share of the selling has not even started yet. Bitcoin still has a long way to fall.”
He also turned his focus to the topic of the month – the disastrous collapse of the FTX exchange and the subsequent spreading contagion, stating that the former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was ‘obviously’ a conman.
Yesterday, he again commented on the collapse of FTX, but this time in relation to regulation, saying that more government regulation is unnecessary, calling for free market regulation, as well as for the end of the US Federal Reserve, which is the country’s central bank, and the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC), among others.
He argued that,
“The beauty of free market capitalism is that it self-regulates. Competition for reputation and profit and loss are better regulators than easily captured bureaucrats.”
‘Bitcoin mania is over’
Schiff is an outspoken stock broker and the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, who evangelizes gold-buying as an investment strategy, but claims that BTC is a scam. He has become pretty infamous in the world of crypto Twitter over the years, where he often trolls BTC advocates.
This prolonged downturn in crypto markets gave him plenty of opportunity to again declare crypto dead and to urge people to purchase gold.
“Bitcoin mania is over. Buy gold,” he said today.
He further claimed that the value of stablecoins would “soon” exceed the value of bitcoin.
At 10:00 UTC on Monday morning, BTC was trading at $16,119. It is down 3% in a day, over 1% in a week, 16% in a month, and 73% in a year.
BTC 30-day price chart:
____
Learn more:
– Bitcoin Billionaire Michael Saylor Gets Into Twitter Spat with Gold Bug Peter Schiff
– Peter Schiff Gets an Unexpected Lesson in the Benefits of Bitcoin as Banking Woes Bite
– Billion-Dollar Crypto Fund Grayscale Refuses to Post Proof-of-Reserves – Next Firm to Collapse?
– Grayscale Ramps Up Efforts Against SEC For Rejecting Bitcoin ETF
– Rich Dad Poor Dad Robert Kiyosaki Calls FTX Founder ‘Bernie Madoff of Crypto’, Says ‘Bitcoin is Not the Problem’
– Binance Now Holds Nearly 600,000 Bitcoin Worth $9.6 Billion – Largest BTC Holder in the World?
