Post
Topic
Board Press
Re: [2020-01-19] Peter Schiff Says Owning Bitcoin (BTC) Was 'Bad Idea' After Losing
by
buwaytress
on 23/01/2020, 06:47:19 UTC
I'm with DooMAD here. He's not wrong, in a sense. I used to think it was really strange that the suits I knew who invested in Bitcoin actually didn't own btc. They paid for an amount of Bitcoin, sure, through an app or some other platform that gave them an account with a balance that updated with bitcoin price. Not even an actual wallet, never mind ownership of the private key. I explained this to them. They got it. But they didn't want that. They can't even trust themselves to remember their email password or phone SIM password, why would they want to risk that with money? So leaving it in the hands of a custodial service that protects their money for them, and reminds them of their password if they forget it, makes sense.

To put this in an actual real life example of my own, I gifted two children a small amount of bitcoin some time in 2018. Just recently, curious to see what they'd done (and to show them actually it's worth more than double now), I checked back. Guess what? The older kid, already 16, lost his private keys (printed). So, my lesson was, Bitcoin -- or at least, in the true sense it was meant to be -- isn't for everyone. Or, people aren't ready for it yet and need to be before they use it in the sense it was meant for.

It was, arguably, irresponsible of me to give it to a child and explain he was fully responsible for it without demonstrating the consequence. Perhaps it was the same for Schiff.