According to Jack Mallers, Bitcoin is the best money in human history. It is the rarest money with a fixed supply of 21 million coins, the most portable and the most divisible. Over the past decade, Bitcoin has returned an average of 60% per annum, while gold has returned only 2% over the same period, Mallers noted.
However, Peter Schiff, a gold investment advocate, disagreed with Mallers. Schiff insists that Bitcoin cannot be considered money, as it is used only for market speculation. Schiff acknowledged that BTC has outperformed many assets and commodities over the past decade. However, he believes that tokenized gold could be a better alternative to Bitcoin, as tokenized precious metal can be shipped around the world faster and cheaper.
In response, Mallers emphasized that gold relies heavily on centralized third parties to make payment transactions. This is a serious limitation that prevents gold from scaling in the global economy, and therefore it cannot be a global reserve currency. If gold were a serious competitor to Bitcoin, the adoption of the first cryptocurrency in society would not have happened so quickly, Mallers believes.
The CEO of Strike predicted that Bitcoin could reach $250,000-$1 million in the next 12-18 months due to its superior blockchain technology and the infusion of liquidity into the cryptocurrency. Schiff was skeptical of this prediction, but promised to admit he was wrong if Bitcoin became the leading means of payment.
"If I can buy insurance policies, pay premiums, and get rent in Bitcoin, pay for dinner in Bitcoin at restaurants... If everything is expressed in satoshis, then I guess I was wrong. You were right. Bitcoin has effectively become money," Schiff said.
In March, Schiff warned investors against investing in cryptocurrency-linked spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for fear of a Bitcoin crash. In July, the economist questioned the long-term holding of Bitcoin, calling it a waste of time and resources.
