Bitcoin is ‘a failure’: Peter Schiff – Does he have a point?
Bitcoin's transaction fees record new highs while the network slows down.
- Exec highlighted that Bitcoin halving slowed down the network.
- Schiff sees a somber future for the king coin.
April marked the completion of a highly anticipated event. With all eyes on the aftermath of the Bitcoin [BTC] halving, many analysts and experts expressed optimism about the digital currency.
However, there’s another side to the story. Peter Schiff, Chairman of SchiffGold and a cryptocurrency critic, took to X (formerly Twitter) to highlight BTC’s exorbitant fees post-halving. He said,
“The cost to complete a #Bitcoin transaction is now $128 and it takes a half hour to process. This is another reason why Bitcoin can’t function as a digital currency. The cost to actually use Bitcoin as a currency is prohibitively high for almost all transactions. It’s a failure.”
Following the halving, fees for a medium-priority transaction surged to more than $146, while those for a high-priority transaction climbed to over $170.
Tokenized gold over Bitcoin
The debate of gold vs. Bitcoin has been a long one. Schiff, being an advocate for the former, shed light on gold’s prospects for being used as a currency.
The exec commented,
“People aren’t using gold as a currency right now. But if they wanted to, gold could be tokenized on a blockchain. Transaction time would be almost instantaneous and cost minimal. Gold works much better on a blockchain than Bitcoin.”
In light of the ongoing political tensions, gold prices spiked briefly over $2,400/ounce. At the same time, BTC’s price was experiencing a decline.
As of this writing, gold was valued at $2,539/ounce, while BTC exchanged hands at $65,992.
Schiff’s BTC price prediction
On the trading front, bullish sentiment has remained dominant on BTC charts. Schiff highlighted $60K as a critical level to watch out for.
“$60K is critical support for #Bitcoin. A decisive break below that level will create a formidable triple top. The immediate downside projection is a move to $20K.”
MicroStrategy possesses about 1% of all Bitcoin in circulation, with around 214,000 BTC purchased at an average cost of $34,000 each.
However, if Bitcoin’s value were to fall to $20,000, the company would face an estimated “unrealized loss” of $2.7 billion.
Meanwhile, as per AMBCrypto’s recent analysis, the price may continue to fluctuate in a parallel channel between the ATH and the support at $61K.
