March 30, 2026
On Thursday, Peter faced off against Mark Moss in a ZeroHedge debate to lay out a clear, market-focused case for gold and a skeptical case against Bitcoin. He argues that central banks are quietly shifting away from the dollar into gold because they no longer trust the ability of the U.S. government to repay debt without relying on the printing press. He also explains why gold retains the key qualities of money and why Bitcoin, by contrast, functions more like a speculative collectible.
He opens by describing the practical reason central banks are buying gold instead of holding more dollars, tying the move to a loss of faith in the dollar's purchasing power and the risk of debt monetization:
But I think that foreign central banks are already moving more of their US dollar reserves into gold because they are losing confidence in the US dollar in the ability of the US government to pay its debts in honest money without resorting to a printing press. So I think that's the main reason that gold rose from 2000 to 5000 before the recent pullback. Now it's around 4400.
He then frames the near-term monetary backdrop and why a pause or even small rate increases by the Fed are not necessarily bad for gold; Peter warns that inflation could spike next year, crushing real interest rates and strengthening the case for bullion:
I don't think the postponement of rate cuts is negative for gold because while the Fed is sitting on hold and even if the Fed were to notch rates up slightly, inflation is going to soar so much in 2026. Real rates are going to collapse. And that's bullish for gold. But just to quickly get to the why gold is money and why Bitcoin is not, the most important characteristic that money has is it needs to be the most liquid commodity. And it has to be a commodity because it has to have its own use independent of its use as a medium of exchange and a unit of account.
He makes a point that technology doesn't weaken gold's monetary case - it strengthens it. Tokenization and the internet, he says, only make gold more useful and money-like by improving divisibility and portability:
And ironically, blockchain and the internet actually make gold even better money because it improves on those properties because you could tokenize gold and now gold becomes even more divisible, even more portable, even more fungible. It makes it better money in the modern age than it's ever been. Whereas Bitcoin, like fiat currency, has no intrinsic value. It has no use. It derives its value based on confidence and belief.
Peter insists that intrinsic use matters. Gold has industrial and decorative uses that give it a baseline demand; Bitcoin lacks that anchor and so its price is purely a function of belief:
Bitcoin has no actual value. You can't confuse value with price. Bitcoin has a price because anything can have a price and people are dumb enough to buy it. So Bitcoin has a price, but it doesn't have any underlying value. And you can't store price.
He emphasizes the behavioral and market differences between the two assets. Gold acts like money across crises; Bitcoin does not. If anything, Peter says, Bitcoin's price action can be the opposite of gold's:
I think people need to understand the fundamental difference between Bitcoin and gold because I don't think Bitcoin is digital gold. It has nothing in common with gold. It doesn't trade like gold. If anything, it's inversely correlated with gold at best. So maybe it's anti gold, but, you know, it's no more digital gold than an image of a hamburger is digital food.
Finally, Peter characterizes much of today's crypto demand as collector-driven speculation rather than investment anchored in fundamental value. He likens modern Bitcoin ownership to collecting rare items with the hope of selling to a later buyer at a higher price:
There are more Bitcoin collectors today than there were 10, 15 years ago. And the Bitcoin collections are now more valuable because more people want to buy Bitcoin to add to their collection. And the reason that people collect Bitcoin and buy Bitcoin is because they think they're going to get rich. They believe that the Bitcoin that they're buying today, they'll be able to sell it in the future to another collector who's going to pay a lot more money for the Bitcoin that he bought.
This article was originally published on SchiffGold.com.