Peter Schiff, a well-known Bitcoin critic and Gold buff has apparently won a debate against former Trump staffer Anthony Scaramucci in a Gold vs Bitcoin setting. The debate was moderated by Intelligence Squared. The gold buff is known to be among the biggest opponents of the cryptocurrency in the world and has relished his rare victory.
Before the debate started, the organizer did a survey of the attendants. 38% of them preferred Gold, 26% Bitcoin and around 35% were undecided. The debate started with Scaramucci at the mike for an opening statement. Scaramucci started by saying that Bitcoin was a currency of the future as it enabled Peer to Peer (P2P) transactions without the involvement of a third party. He continued on and listed Bitcoin’s advantages over Gold itself including its pre-determined scarcity and digital properties.
Scaramucci said:
I think this cryptocurrency revolution — and Bitcoin specifically, because of its scarcity — is going to transcend gold. It’s more portable; it’s impregnable in terms of the transaction over the blockchain”
Peter Schiff on the other hand immediately started bashing Bitcoin and said that Bitcoin was marketed like Gold but it had nothing in common with it. He said Gold has unique metallic properties and Bitcoin on the other hand was just digital code that had no intrinsic value.
He said:
Part of the marketing fraud is to try to portray Bitcoin as gold, gold 2.0, digital gold. I mean, Bitcoin itself is always displayed as a coin, and the color is gold, and you put like a ‘B’ on it. But it’s not a coin; it’s just a digital string of numbers; it doesn’t have any substance,”
They both had a counter argument session as well in which Scarmucci reiterated the importance of digital currencies and how they are becoming more and more important with time. Schiff stated that the only situation in which he would back Bitcoin was if it were backed by Gold.
Due to Schiff’s better debate talking points, the audience was largely in favour of Gold at the end. Around 51% of the audience preferred Gold, 32% Bitcoin and 17% still undecided. So, it was a rare debate victory for Schiff.
Schiff is one of the most prominent anti-Bitcoin voices in the world and has predicted its collapse again and again, but to no end. He also disowned his own son for speaking in favour of Bitcoin and said that he would remove him from his estate altogether.
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
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