Longtime Bitcoin critic and Euro Pacific Capital founder Peter Schiff is once again sounding the alarm on BTC. In a recent social media post, Schiff pointed out that while gold rose 3% over a weekend, Bitcoin fell by 3% during the same period—arguing that this proves Bitcoin is “nothing like gold.”
It’s a bold claim, but does it hold up under scrutiny?
Schiff’s Surface-Level Comparison
Schiff’s argument is simple: gold went up while Bitcoin went down. Therefore, Bitcoin can’t be considered “digital gold.” But this kind of short-term price comparison misses the broader thesis that underpins Bitcoin’s gold analogy.
Bitcoin advocates don’t equate BTC to a literal gold ETF or certificate. Instead, they compare the two assets by analogy—starting with Satoshi Nakamoto’s original Bitcoin white paper.
In it, Satoshi wrote:
“The steady addition of a constant amount of new coins is analogous to gold miners expending resources to add gold to circulation. In our case, it is CPU time and electricity that is expended.”
In other words, Bitcoin mimics gold’s scarcity through computational effort and limited supply—a design choice intended to create a digital form of sound money.
The Digital Gold Thesis Still Holds
Schiff doubled down on his skepticism, commenting:
“Gold is 100% intrinsic value. Bitcoin is 100% faith.”
But that raises an important philosophical question: does gold really have intrinsic value? Many economists would argue it doesn’t. Gold’s status as a monetary asset comes from its unique physical properties: rarity, durability, fungibility, and universal recognizability.
Bitcoin’s protocol was deliberately engineered to replicate these same properties in digital form—just without needing a physical commodity to back it. It’s decentralized, scarce (21 million cap), secure, and verifiable. These characteristics are why many still stand by Bitcoin as “digital gold.”
Bitcoin vs. Gold: Performance Matters
Schiff’s argument also sidesteps one crucial fact: Bitcoin has dramatically outperformed gold across nearly all meaningful investment timeframes.
While both assets are seen as hedges against fiat currency devaluation and central bank overreach, Bitcoin has delivered superior returns—a fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed by younger generations of investors and institutional players alike.
So, Is Bitcoin Really Nothing Like Gold?
Peter Schiff may insist that Bitcoin is nothing like gold, but a closer look reveals that BTC was purpose-built to fulfill many of the same economic roles. While their forms differ—one physical, one digital—their monetary properties and use cases increasingly overlap.
Whether or not you agree with Schiff, it’s clear that Bitcoin continues to challenge traditional assumptions about what makes a good store of value—and in doing so, it’s earning its place in the modern financial conversation.
