Peter Schiff vs. Stefan Molyneux - Gold v. Bitcoin Debate (video)

[seriouscoin]

I couldnt stand thro the garbage spew out by Peter after 10min of watching.

The idiot doesnt understand bitcoin, i'm sure he tried to but its hard when hes followed Gold religion.

[LightRider]

Probably the same as you did, engaging in the eco-genocidal death spiral of capitalism. Because I didn't know any better. I may have to one day. Undoubtedly, but unfortunately no one can survive all on their own.

What if society itself is actually the ideal venus project central computer?   Want a house?  Call a home building expert.  Want food?  Go to restaurant.  Imagine that.  Maybe your central computer can make a burger like five guys, but I doubt it, since the 5 guys would be lounging on the beach all day in the venus project world instead of figuring out how to program a computer to make great burgers.  WE are the experts, so we call on EACHOTHER to do things that we can't do ourselves.  

Unfortunately, we tossed physical slavery a while ago, and slavery to a central computer isn't much better, so the only catch is that you'll have to get off your ass develop some skills of your own, or have someone else support you with their skills.   It all boils down to the fact that life requires work to stay alive, and to suggest that it's anyone's responsibility but your own is to endorse slavery, be it to other humans or a central computer.  

We are all slave to physical reality, whether we recognize it or not.

[LightRider]

I couldnt stand thro the garbage spew out by Peter after 10min of watching.

The idiot doesnt understand bitcoin, i'm sure he tried to but its hard when hes followed Gold religion.

All money is a religion.

[Elwar]

I have read a lot by Peter Schiff and he makes a good case against fiat currencies and especially the US dollar in his writings.

I have been against fiat for a while and also believed that the solution was in owning gold and I searched and searched for a way to have my spendable money in gold as it would not suffer the loss of value that fiat does.

However, with all of the research I did, there were huge fees that came with any gold payment setup. Molyneux is right, there is a large amount of cost behind being backed by gold. The sites I checked out charged a fee every month or so for storage/security and the cost of getting your gold or making a transaction was usually a few percent. When I factored in the amount of money I would spend to have my spending money in gold it cost much more than the inflation I was losing with fiat.

With Bitcoin I could pay the .1% to transfer my dollars to bitcoins and by the time I go to spend it, on average, the value has gone up vs the dollar much more than .1%. Even if I need to cash out and pay another .1% to pay for something with USD the gain in value is worth it unless I am paying for something on the same day that I get paid. Which is how I pay my mortgage. Otherwise I transfer my paycheck to bitcoins.

[AnonyMint]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFcTJAQ7zc4

Thanks!  Stefan sometimes guest host on Peter's show.

Everyone should listen to this!

Peter Schiff's repeats most all of my points, but he says a gold-backed private bank issued digital currency would be superior. Schiff misses the point that such a private bank issued digital currency isn't decentralized, and thus it is highly vulnerable to government control. Other than that, Schiff and I agree on most of his points, including the coming political threat:

http://www.activistpost.com/2013/11/social-logins-for-government-services.html

Schiff's main flaw is he thinks a backed-currency is better. If I debated him, I would demolish his logic on this point. You can see my upthread comments (I think starting on page 11) on why fractional reserves and gold-backed private bank issued notes was a failure. The intrinsic value of a decentralized currency is that it is a currency (unfortunately Bitcoin isn't). 100% pure physical gold has never been a currency and never will be-- was always either debased by shaving, impurity, or fractional reserves in order to distribute widely as a currency. Refer to my debate with MoonShadow before page 11.

We already demolished the "it is a standard" argument.

Schiff is correct that it is much easier for the government to track on the internet, and anonymity is very, very difficult. That doesn't mean anonymity is impossible. But for example CoinJoin or coin mixers really won't work unless the other people you are mixing with never reveal their identity accidentally any time in the distant future.

It is true that all of us want a better option than fiat currency. We just don't have it yet.

[BitcoinNews.io]

it's not worth watching, imho. just in case you were debating whether it's worth the ~50 minutes.

[Imahara]

Pretty telling whats gonna happen next:

Google trends Buy Gold vs Buy Bitcoin:

http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=bitcoin#q=buy%20bitcoin%2C%20buy%20gold%2C%20buy%20silver&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q

[TTBit]

Peter Schiff incorrectly believes that the product known as "bitcoin" is over. With colored coins / Mastercoin, a company can buy a single bitcoin and essentially destroy it, removing its fungibility with "standard" bitcoins.  This off-shore company can now back its own currency with any number of items, including gold. The new coins would trade freely world-wide backed by gold, anonymously. For Peter Schiff's gold backed currency idea to work, he has to have a centralized database of clients, complying with different government regulations. Only clients of Mr. Schiff can participate, whereas no account is necessary for the bitcoin backed gold currency.

Once Peter Schiff sees this technology, he'll change his mind on a decentralized currency.

[flix]

Back in the day Peter Schiff wrote an article titled "The rise of the barter economy" in which he commented on e-gold, the Liberty Dollar and other failed attempts at alternative currencies...

http://archive.lewrockwell.com/schiff/schiff128.html

He knows more than he lets on about the value of Bitcoin...

The way I see it he is just being contrarian (as well as cautious), but once he takes the time to look a bit deeper he will come to be a great Bitcoin supporter (if he isn't already).

I think that the two things that will turn him over will be:

1. Understanding how the distributed nature of Bitcoin makes it much more resilient to attack (especially by the US govt.) than e-gold could ever be...

2. Understanding what open source really means. Transparency is key in allowing us not to have to trust the protocol, but rather know what it does. (and if it is ever modified, what exactly has been changed).

[flix]

Peter Schiff has hardcore doubts about Bitcoin and keeps comparing it to gold, which hasn't been money in any form for many decades and stands no chance of being adopted in place of national fiat systems. Also he keeps assessing Bitcoin as an investment commodity, which is like looking at railroads in the 19th century as speculative stocks instead of a great technology to move people and stuff from place to place. I love Peter, but this technophobia on the part of a generation is getting increasingly implausible.

Jeffrey A. Tucker

[forevernoob]

I liked it, I thought Schiff had a few good arguments. But of course he's biased when it comes to Bitcoin vs Gold. Bitcoin vs fiat however....

I do think that Stefan should have made some more points on why BTC has a value.
One of the things that makes BTC valuable is in fact that it has proven it's ability to resist government involvement and regulation. (SR, anonymous OTC trading to name a few)
He should have mentioned SR/dark net to Schiff, would have been fun to see his reaction.

[qwerty555]

Did any of them mention that the price of Gold is " FIXED" by 5 banks and has been since 1919?

How Gold Price Is Manipulated During The "London Fix"

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-25/how-gold-price-manipulated-during-london-fix

Bitcoin prices will probably also be subject ( if it not already is or hasn't been in the past) to manipulation by big players


the success rate jumped to 69.9 percent, and within five minutes it had climbed to 80 percent, Caminschi and Heaney wrote. On days when the gold price per ounce moved by more than $3, gold futures successfully predicted the outcome in more than nine out of 10 occasions. “Not only are the trades quite accurate in predicting the fixing direction, the more money that is made by way of a larger price change, the more accurate the trade becomes,” Caminschi and Heaney wrote. “This is highly suggestive of information leaking from the fixing to these public markets.”

Oh please, 9 out of 10 times is hardly indicative of any wrongdoing. After all, JPM lost money on, well, zero trading days in all of 2013, and nobody cares. So if a coin landing heads about 200 times in a row is considered normal by regulators, then surely the CTFC will find nothing wrong with a little gold manipulation here and there. Manipulation, which it itself previously said did not exist. But everyone already knew that too.

And Paper Gold is another BIG problem waiting to explode

http://www.zerohedge.com/search/apachesolr_search/paper%20gold

[bitcoinpsftp]

Not sure if this was mentioned (oh, and thanks for lnking the debate, was awesome to watch), but how was the example of e-gold not brought up when discussing gold backed currencies???  There is much history on the case of gold backed currencies and how the US hates them and shuts them down.