Peter Schiff Opines About The Reason Behind Bitcoin’s Recent Bull Run

By Rishma Banerjee

Peter Schiff, a veteran gold bug and a known figure in the crypto community for being essentially anti-bitcoin said that Bitcoin’s (BTC) fresh bull run this week is down to speculators betting on Chinese economic upheaval, not Chinese unrest itself.

He is a tweet mentioned that the current events impacting the Chinese economy did not cause new interest in Bitcoin. He said,

“The Chinese aren’t buying Bitcoin as a safe haven. Speculators are buying, betting that the Chinese will buy it as a safe haven!”

As was reported, BTC/USD has shot up over the past 24 hours, with many experts expecting a fall in the Chinese yuan to be a significant catalyst for that. Schiff, however, is of the opinion that those events provided speculative traders with another outlet for squeezing markets and introducing more volatility.
He composed his remarks as an attack on CNBC, which he claimed spent a more time on Bitcoin’s movements at the expense of assets such as gold. He tweeted,

“CNBC is trying its best to dupe its audience into buying Bitcoin. Despite gold being a much larger market, CNBC devotes far more airtime to Bitcoin.”

This perspective is curious to say the least, as it was just last week that Schiff was appearing in an hour-long debate on the advantages and disadvantages of gold versus Bitcoin. Hosted by Ran Neuner, who regularly talks about cryptocurrency on the network, the discussion with Morgan Creek Digital co-founder Anthony Pompliano soon became an issue of much discussion.
For his part, Pompliano noted that Schiff should be 100% certain of Bitcoin’s lack of value, or he would regret lambasting instead of investing in it.
Since the debate aired, BTC/USD gained around 15%, leading to predictable responses to his tweet from traders who pointed to gold’s comparatively lacklustre performance for many years.
“Yeah, because speculators can push the price of an asset up by 30% in one week… right?” Josh Rager, known investor and trader responded.

Schiff, in fact, owns at least 0.21 BTC ($2,470), which he mentioned he would be keeping after Pompliano inadvertently caused around 100 people to send him free coins in a bid to change his mind.