In a new interview with US media personality Tucker Carlson, gold advocate Peter Schiff renewed his attack on Bitcoin and the broader crypto industry.
Speaking on Carlson’s show, he argued that Bitcoin (BTC) is a speculative instrument with “no actual use” and warned that proposals for a US strategic reserve amount to a taxpayer‑funded bailout for early adopters.
Schiff also spent much of the conversation attacking official inflation data and fiscal policy, telling Carlson that Americans are “being lied to” about inflation, and arguing that the government changed the Consumer Price Index so that it could blame the private sector for the higher cost of living, when it was “simply raising prices in response to inflation.”
He singled out President Donald Trump’s signature Big Beautiful Bill as “the worst thing that we’ve done under Trump,” and argued that the legislation not only preserved all the deficit spending under President Joe Biden, but “made it worse” by “increasing government spending” and cutting taxes.
“Complete waste of capital”
Schiff turned to the crypto industry and complained about the US government “promoting” it, which is a “complete waste of capital” and has caused many Americans to “throw their money away” on crypto.
When Carlson cuts in to ask, “Why is it throwing it away?” and why betting on Bitcoin is any different from buying gold or stocks, Schiff answers that BTC has “no actual use” beyond speculation and “the only reason anybody wants to buy it” is that “they think the price is going to go up.” “That is the sole source of demand,” he said.
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He added that people who “made money in crypto” only did so because “the crypto that they bought a long time ago went way up,” not because they produced anything of value, or made people’s lives better.
“How’s that different from buying gold? You’re not making anything. You’re not making anyone’s life better,” Carlson interjects, to which Schiff replies:
“There’s a big difference… [Bitcoin] is never going to earn money in the future. It is a non-income-producing digital asset. It’s got nothing in common with gold.”
Related: Tokenized gold demand rises as US dollar weakens
Bitcoin: The new global reserve currency?
Summarizing Schiff’s arguments about the state of the global economy and the decline in purchasing power of the US dollar, Carlson asks why Bitcoin could not become the next global reserve asset as confidence in the dollar erodes.
Schiff dismisses that idea outright, claiming that a Bitcoin strategic reserve is really just a “Bitcoin bailout fund,” trying to use taxpayer money, and alleging that some early holders “were able to pay off a bunch of politicians and get them to support Bitcoin.”
He argues that both BTC and fiat currencies are ultimately faith‑based, but that central banks cannot rely on Bitcoin because it has no non‑monetary demand and would collapse if they ever tried to liquidate it at scale.
By contrast, he calls gold “real money” and “a valuable commodity” used in jewelry, aerospace, consumer electronics and medicine, and says that tokenized, fully backed gold on blockchains can deliver internet‑native payments without creating inflation or relying on ever‑rising token prices.
The price of gold has been on a tear lately, reaching a new all-time high over $5,000 an ounce on Monday, amid rising global trade tensions, while the Bitcoin price fell briefly below $86,000, signaling a sharp divergence as the precious metal surged 17% in January.
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