Schiff is right about a lot of things, but he is missing the utility here. 

It is like saying, in 1980, "There are/can be tons of TCP/IP networks, what makes the internet (or even arpanet) so special?  Anyone can build another one, so it has no value."

He is also plainly wrong with this:
"Nobody knew what bitcoin was five or ten years ago."  Lots of people knew what bitcoin was in 2012 (5 years ago) and certainly enough knew in 2010 (slashdot did a story that exposed it to a lot of people in July 2010) and more knew of it in 2011.  That is just factually incorrect. 

And 10 years ago (2007), clearly no one knew what it was since it didn't exist.  That is like saying, "Nobody knew what the internet was 60 years ago," "Nobody knew what the web was 30 years ago," or "Nobody knew what electricity was 5000 years ago."