Investor Peter Schiff is skeptical about bitcoin and other crypto-currencies, despite all their successes in 2017, and especially on the rise in the price of bitcoin, which just recently came close to a record level of 4,500.
Moreover, it is the phenomenal rise in the price of bitcoin that is even more, in his opinion, that the crypto-currencies and bitcoin in particular are a bubble.
In early 2017, Schiff called bitcoin "digital fool gold" and compared the virtual currency with the infamous bubble associated with the toy brand Beanie Babies.
In a recent interview with CNBC, Schiff argues that optimism about bitcoins and other digital currencies is a sign of an impending bubble:.
Of course, many are very optimistic about bitcoin and other crypto currencies, and hope for their further growth. But it is the psychology of the bubble that feeds this optimism. You are more and more beginning to believe that it will shoot. And the higher the price, the more you believe in it. But the price does not grow due to the fact that this asset has some real value and not because it is really what will work. The reason that the price is growing is speculation.
The arguments of Schiff Schiff, who correctly predicted the mortgage crisis in 2008, said that his skeptical view of the crypto currency is based on the fact that they are neither money nor goods.
However, he recognized that the digital currencies themselves provide good trading opportunities for investors who do not engage in long-term investments.
He also asked an interesting question, which concerns the use of bitcoins and other digital currencies in the long term:.
Even if you think that the crypto currency will work, how do you know that in 10 years bitcoin will be exactly the currency that will work? If digital currencies are a working mechanism, then nothing prevents someone from coming up with one more. And further. And further. In Bitcoin, there is nothing that the other Crypto-currency could not repeat. Now bitcoin is the most popular, because it was the first.