Noted Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff didn’t mince his words on Wednesday after learning that his son had turned his entire portfolio into the cryptocurrency.
Schiff, the candid CEO and president of investment company Euro Pacific Capital, jumped on Twitter to criticize his son Spencer, who he said was “brainwashed.”
“My son @SpencerKSchiff went all in on #Bitcoin on the last drop below $50k,” the elder Schiff wrote. “100% of his portfolio is now in Bitcoin. He sold the last of his #silver stocks to raise the cash. If my own son is this brainwashed imagine how vulnerable most kids are. He’s HODLing to infinity or bust.”
Some users, however, took issue with Schiff’s post and instead argued that Spencer had made the right call.
“At least someone in your family is growing their wealth this year,” entrepreneur and podcast host Anthony Pompliano replied.
“Your son seems to understand Money better than you buddy,” another person wrote. “Means of exchange is what we decide it is, and we decide that bitcoin is better than and the falling fiat [currencies], as it cant be manipulated, printed out of thin air nor counterfeited.”
When one Twitter user told Schiff that his son would become wealthier than him, the CEO responded in kind. “I need to disinherit him,” he said of Spencer. “Otherwise he will squander my hard earned wealth on more #Bitcoin.”
Schiff, a noted investor in gold, has long dismissed Bitcoin as an investable currency. After Bitcoin hit $50,000 earlier this year, he suggested on Twitter that a “permanent move down to zero is inevitable.” In an interview on Fox Business’ Making Money with Charles Payne, he also claimed that, “Bitcoin is the latest iteration of fool’s gold and anybody buying it is ultimately a fool.”
“It’s never going to be money,” he asserted on the show. “It doesn’t fit the very definition of money. Money needs to be a commodity. It needs to have actual value unto itself, not just the uses and means of exchange.”
Last fall, Schiff admitted that he had wrongly predicted that Bitcoin would collapse after the digital currency rose to a yearly high of over $12,000 in August. As of this writing, one Bitcoin is now trading for $56,545.60.
