Goldbug and bitcoin skeptic Peter Schiff has cast doubt on reports that the massive 16 Psyche asteroid contains abundant amounts of gold.
According to the CEO of investment advisory firm Euro Pacific Capital, the report is ‘just nonsense’ being propagated by the Bitcoin community in order to make the cryptocurrency more popular.
Speaking to RT , Schiff said the alleged existence of vast amounts of gold and other precious metals on the asteroid is not based on science:
It’s just BS, it’s not a scientific or economic story, and it’s just nonsense. It is being floated by the bitcoin community to try to create the false narrative that gold supply is not scarce so the price of gold is going to crash and that people should own bitcoin instead of gold because bitcoin is more scarce, because you’ll never find any bitcoin on the asteroid.
Per Schiff, the massive asteroid possesses a composition just like that of the Earth’s core. Therefore, it is most likely consists of ‘iron-nickel alloy’.
Schiff, however, acknowledged that the asteroid could possess tiny amounts of other metals including gold. But the Bitcoin skeptic warned that it would be too expensive to mine the precious metal so far away from the earth:
There could be some gold there but it would cost a fortune to mine it there.
While the existence of the 16 Psyche asteroid has long been known, NASA’s plans to send an exploration mission in 2022 has ignited excitement. For Bitcoin enthusiasts, the takeaway has been that gold which derives its worth from its perceived scarcity has now lost its value proposition. Consequently, it is now not as rare as Bitcoin whose supply is capped at 21 million.
Bitcoin bull and co-founder of market research boutique Fundstrat Tom Lee likened gold to buying a supposed collector’s item only to realize that the market is awash with them.
Co-founder of Gemini cryptocurrency exchange and one half of the Winklevoss twins, Cameron, predicted that space mining will cause the prices of precious metals to fall drastically. This will leave Bitcoin as the ‘only truly fixed asset in the world’.
At the moment, it is hard to tell who between goldbugs and bitcoin bulls is right and who is wrong. One thing is certain though – whether NASA’s exploratory mission to 16 Psyche proves the existence of commercially viable gold or not, Bitcoin will never be found to be naturally occurring on an asteroid.