​Peter Schiff urges hurrying up to sell bitcoin

The material is not an investment recommendation and is published for information purposes only.

What’s new? On March 10, Peter Schiff, head of the brokerage firm Euro Pacific Capital, urged crypto traders on his Twitter account to sell bitcoins as soon as possible and invest the proceeds in gold. “A wave of blockchain-related bankruptcies will soon crash down on cryptocurrencies, turning the crypto winter into a deep freeze,” the entrepreneur concluded, citing as an example the situation with the crypto bank Silvergate, which announced liquidation two days earlier.

Crypto community’s reaction. In his post, Schiff asks, “If crypto really is the future, why is Silvergate, the premier crypto bank already a thing of the past?” Faced with deposit outflows amid the bankruptcy of the FTX exchange, Silvergate sold off billions of dollars worth of assets in January and shut down its crypto payment network in early March. At the same time, over the past week, representatives of the bank have been developing options for its rescue jointly with officials from the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

Members of the crypto community reacted skeptically to Schiff’s statement, who is known for his criticism of bitcoin, recalling that his own bank, Euro Pacific International Bank, was closed back in 2022, and some users still can not access the funds.

Thus, in July, the authorities of Puerto Rico issued an order to terminate the bank due to violations of internal controls and insolvency. At the time, crypto advocates also pointed out to Schiff the shortcomings of the traditional financial system and emphasized BTC’s resistance to censorship. During the March 10 discussion, however, Schiff said that his bank did not go bankrupt, urging users to “blame the government and the media for your inability to access your funds.”

“Silvergate died on its own. My bank was killed by government and the media,” the entrepreneur stressed.

My bank didn't fail. Blame the government and the media for your inability to access your funds. — Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) March" class="redactor-linkify-object">https://twitter.com/PeterSchiff/status/16340400481... 10, 2023

What happened before? In August 2022, Schiff predicted BTC would fall to $10 000, in September he said that bitcoin support at $20 000 was not real and would end up being a false bottom. The entrepreneur believed that such a value would allow short-sighted investors to “climb aboard a sinking ship” and lead to a loss of funds. He said in November, following the collapse of FTX, that there could be no bailout for the largest exchange, Binance, should problems arise. Schiff added that “the race to get out of BTC is on” on the market.