Economist and long-time Bitcoin (BTC) critic Peter Schiff has felt vindicated over the past week as his warning that BTC’s price would fall victim to “selling the news” after the recent launch of the first spot Bitcoin ETFs on the U.S. market has come to fruition – with the top crypto seeing a pullback of 21.5% at its lowest point.
“The #Bitcoin ‘experts’ who ridiculed me and anyone else who claimed the new #BitcoinETFs would be a ‘buy the rumor, sell the news’ event, are now dismissing the significance of the decline, claiming it’s just a classic ‘buy the rumor, sell the news’ event that was to be expected,” Schiff tweeted on Tuesday.
Despite the launch of the ETFs and the potential inflows that could follow, Schiff maintains his position that BTC will ultimately go to zero.
“The new #BitcoinETFs aren’t creating additional demand, but merely shifting demand,” he said. “Investors who might have bought actual #Bitcoin, Bitcoin-related equities like $MSTR, or $GBTC are simply buying the new ETFs instead. Rearranging the deck chairs won’t stop the ship from sinking.”
“Here is how #Bitcoin works,” he added. “We create something with no value, then artificially limit its supply. Then we all pretend it has value and buy it. Other people see the price going up and they buy it too. Then we all [keep] #HODLing it hoping everyone keeps pretending it has value.”
“No matter how low the price of #Bitcoin falls, its proponents will always be able to claim its outperformed #gold,” he said. “For example, even if Bitcoin falls to $100 in 2031 and gold rises to $10,000, they will claim that Bitcoin is up 100x in the past 20 years, while gold is only up 5x.”
X user Trendonomics followed up Schiff’s last post with the question, “What if #bitcoin goes to $10,000,00 by 2031?”
To which he replied, “If the U.S. dollar goes the way of the German Papiermark then I supposed that’s possible.”
Schiff was referring to the hyperinflation that occurred in Germany between 1921 and 1923 when the German Papiermark national currency plunged at an unprecedented rate, at one point reaching an exchange rate of 4,210,500,000,000:1 with the U.S. dollar.
While Schiff might have been responding in jest, hyperinflation does indeed remain a risk, as the U.S. debt – along with the debt of many nations around the world – is starting to increase at an exponential rate.
Data provided by usdebtclock.org shows that the U.S. national debt currently stands at $34.1 trillion, an increase of more than $1 trillion since the end of Q3 2023. In January alone, the debt expanded from $33.990 trillion to $34.1 trillion, an increase of 122 billion in 26 days.
Has no one else noticed this from Q4 GDP report? Annualized interest on the federal debt now exceeds $1 trillion and is projected to breach $3 trillion, annualized rate, by Q4 2030 – INSANE and UNSUSTAINABLE: pic.twitter.com/7uHEpHk4WA
— E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. (@RealEJAntoni) January 25, 2024
The federal deficit currently stands at -6.460% of the GDP, meaning government expenditures significantly outweigh revenues. This means the government will need to borrow more funds to make up the difference, further increasing the total debt.
The matter has become so dire that it is one of the few things in the current political climate that has bipartisan appeal in Congress.
Senators Mitt Romney (R-UT) and Joe Manchin (D-WV), and Representatives Bill Huizenga (R-MI) and Scott Peters (D-CA) wrote an op-ed on The Hill warning that the U.S. national debt is exploding at an unsustainable rate.
“In just 10 years, the national debt has more than doubled. Not only is this level of debt unsustainable, but it is growing at the largest rate seen in the history of this country,” they said. “$34 trillion is a staggering amount of money. To put this in context, the national debt has now exceeded $100,000 for every person in the United States.”
“Interest payments on the debt totaled $659 billion in the last fiscal year, making it the fourth largest expenditure in the budget,” they added. “In the next few years, interest payments are on pace to exceed both defense and non-defense discretionary spending, which includes education, transportation and more. And if we continue at this rate of fiscal imbalance, in the not-so-distant future, interest payments will be our largest expenditure.”
“Now more than ever, we must find bipartisan solutions that stabilize our nation’s finances for future generations… The national debt is the greatest threat our country faces – and we are rapidly approaching the crisis point,” they warned. “Given the imminent nature of this crisis, continuing to turn a blind eye will only put the American Dream further out of reach for our children and grandchildren.”
To help start the process of addressing this issue, they proposed “the establishment of a bipartisan, bicameral fiscal commission tasked with finding solutions to strengthen our fiscal health and meaningfully decrease the national debt.”
The 16-member commission would include 12 members of Congress and four outside experts, equally appointed by congressional leaders, they said.
“We were elected to lead, and that involves making sacrifices and tough decisions,” they concluded. “There is growing appetite on both sides of the aisle to address our national debt. It is time for Congress to put the interests of the country ahead of political expediency and get us on sound fiscal footing before it is too late.”
Bitcoin was launched by Satoshi Nakamoto in January 2009 during the great financial crisis and was intended to combat the issues we now face. While Schiff has lambasted the top crypto for more than a decade, he may have inadvertently highlighted one of the best arguments for holding Bitcoin in a digital world that is headed toward a currency reckoning.
No nation has ever spent its way into prosperity, yet we just topped $34T of debt and nobody in the uniparty seems to care.
The laws of financial physics apply to all. The USA and its currency are headed for a day of reckoning.
— Bob Anderson (@bob24225) January 3, 2024
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