PETER Schiff was one of the first economists to forewarn Americans and accurately predict the 2008 financial crash as early as 2006.
Now the financier is predicting the extinction of cryptocurrency and thinks Bitcoin will eventually hit zero.
But what is the story behind Schiff, why “doesn’t he believe in cryptocurrency” and what is his net worth?
Who is Peter Schiff?
Peter Schiff was born on March 23, 1963 and started his career as a stockbroker on Wall Street for the Lehman Brothers in the early 1990s.
In 1996, Schiff and a business partner purchased a brokerage firm and renamed it Euro Pacific Capital.
READ MORE ON 24/7 CRYPTO
They started with a small office in LA, and eventually relocated to Connecticut in 2005.
The firm now has branches across the US in Arizona, Boca Raton, California, Scottsdale, Newport Beach, Manhattan Beach, and New York.
Schiff was one of few economists to predict the 2008 financial crash.
In an August 2006 interview, Schiff said: “The United States is like the Titanic and I am here with the lifeboat trying to get people to leave the ship.
“I see a real financial crisis coming for the United States.”
Then in December 2006, Schiff predicted: “What’s going to happen in 2007 is that real estate prices are going to come crashing back down to Earth.”
Schiff then founded Schiff Gold in 2010 – a precious metals dealer based in Manhattan.
In 2010, he also ran for the US Senate seat in Connecticut during the Republican Primary, but lost to Linda McMahon.
Schiff currently has a podcast called The Peter Schiff Show, where he discusses financial news, both in the US and global markets.
What has Peter Schiff said about Bitcoin?
Peter Schiff has been a very vocal sceptic of Bitcoin.
On January 19, 2020, Schiff said his Bitcoin wallet got ‘corrupted’ and he had lost all the BTC he owned.
He said: “My wallet got corrupted somehow and my password is no longer valid.
“So now not only is my Bitcoin intrinsically worthless; it has no market value either.
“I knew owning Bitcoin was a bad idea, I just never realized it was this bad.”
He also said: “The success of Bitcoin rests on more people buying it.
“If you own it, you need to get many of your friends or colleagues to buy it because that’s the only way its prices go up.
“Bitcoin is not an asset like real estate where you can collect rent, stocks where you could collect a dividend or bonds where you get paid interest.
“It’s not like a commodity where you actually can use it for something, like oil to generate power.
“It’s not like gold, where you could make jewelry out of it.
“It’s just a hype machine.
“If Bitcoin will still be here in the next 20 to 50 years, it only means more people are gonna lose money. That’s because when more people pile into it, this means the bubble gets bigger and bigger. Then, there are a lot more losses when it pops.” – Peter Schiff
What is Peter Schiff’s net worth?
Peter Schiff has a net worth of around $70 million, which he had made from his career in finance.