Peter Schiff Asks For Bitcoin For His Birthday in Latest Jab at Crypto Industry – Decrypt

Peter Schiff didn’t want gifts for his 62nd birthday yesterday.

Instead, he wants Bitcoin for his new Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, which he has finally managed to transfer from an exchange into a hardware wallet, according to a post on X.

Schiff, a longtime financial commentator who was one of the few to forecast the 2008 economic crash and a founding member at Euro Pacific Asset Management, launched his so-called reserve earlier this month as a tongue-in-cheek jab at the U.S. government’s plans to introduce one.

So far, Schiff’s reserve has accumulated over $4,500, mostly from small donations. And despite his long history of bitcoin skepticism, he insists he’s in it for the long haul, claiming his strategy “is to go down with the ship, like a true HODLer!”

Schiff has been one of the loudest critics of the Trump administration’s plans for a U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, or any reserve containing cryptocurrencies.

Instead, he advocates for strengthening existing reserves in gold — Schiff really loves gold — or petroleum.

“The more money a country diverts to crypto, the less capital it has to fund the production of real goods and legitimate wealth creation. The worst thing any government can do is encourage or subsidize this waste of resources,” he wrote on March 7.

Schiff has also called out what he sees as an overly cozy relationship between the crypto industry and the current U.S. administration, as well as the Trump family’s own cryptocurrency ventures.

He branded the recent White House crypto summit a “disgrace” and “national embarrassment.”

Last week, he claimed that the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve initiative was nothing more than a way for the crypto industry to lure more Americans into speculative losses.

“Thanks to Trump, more Americans will lose more money in crypto than in any prior speculative mania in history. The $TRUMP meme coin, already down over 80%, is a perfect example,” he said.

Despite a brief spike over the weekend when Trump posted about the token on Truth Social, the meme coin is down 84.1% from its January 19 all-time high of $73.43, according to CoinGecko. It’s currently trading at $11.67, up 7.7% in the last 24 hours, but still a far cry from its peak.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair