It appears that bitcoin, the alternative digital currency in the marketplace, has plenty of bulls, including Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. The Winklevoss twins feel bitcoin should be worth at least 100 times more than its current value today. According to the men, bitcoin is “gold 2.0.”
Speaking with CNBC on Tuesday, the Winklevosses said it is similar to gold. “In terms of a store of value, it definitely has the properties of gold, and people are viewing it that way,” said the Winklevosses.
The two men also say the digital currency is a technology of the future. “The idea that payments are increasingly going to use a network like the bitcoin network to move money around the world,” the Winklevosses said. They plan on establishing a bitcoin exchange traded fund.
Is bitcoin gold 2.0 or just a bubble? Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, says it’s the latter. Schiff chuckled in his interview with CNBC at the suggestion that bitcoin is a genuine alternative to the 2,000-year-old yellow metal that has been used in various forms.
“A bubble is a bubble. And there’s a bubble in bitcoins.”
“I don’t see bitcoins as an alternative to gold,” Schiff said. “If anything, [the creators of bitcoin are] modern-day alchemists, but you can’t make gold digitally. It’s no better than a fiat currency.”
Instead, bitcoin, which was valued at $13.50 in January and has risen to $375 this week, is nothing but a bubble currency. Schiff likened it to “a modern-day tulip mania,” a 17th century bull market of tulip bulbs in Holland.
“The reason people are buying bitcoins is because they think they’re going to make money,” stated Schiff. “They think the price is going up. And the price probably will go up. It’ll keep going up until it implodes. And a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money in bitcoins.”
During the Wednesday morning trading session, gold is up at $1,274.
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