Well-known critic of the first cryptocurrency, Peter Schiff, made an unexpected admission: he could have made a good profit on Bitcoin (BTC), but he does not regret ignoring that opportunity at all. However, his stance remains unchanged — moreover, he believes that long-term coin holders following the HODL strategy lost far more than he did.
This statement came in the context of his reflections on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the cryptocurrency market. According to Schiff, the development of AI poses a much more serious threat to Bitcoin than potential benefits.
Five years without Bitcoin: a strategy that paid off?
Schiff emphasizes that for the past five years he has deliberately gone without Bitcoin and sees no tragedy in that. On the contrary, he is confident that he came out ahead compared to those who followed the "buy and hold" strategy, ignoring market cycles.
"Yes, I could have made a lot of money on BTC. But that is no longer relevant. Over the past five years, it has been more profitable for me not to hold Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency holders lost a lot of money because they did not sell their coins," Peter Schiff stated.
Schiff's skepticism toward Bitcoin is nothing new. He has repeatedly called BTC's price rise a reason to sell, not a signal to invest. During downturns, he traditionally promotes gold as a more reliable store of value. Last week, he advised selling cryptocurrency as it approached the $65,000 mark. After that, the asset's price reached $79,500.
AI as a new threat to Bitcoin
In his original post, Schiff noted that artificial intelligence is taking speculative money, electricity, and data center capacity away from Bitcoin. In his opinion, over time, the technology will find weaknesses in the code and cryptography of the first cryptocurrency that developers overlooked.
The crypto market is already feeling the influence of the new technology. AI-driven inflation has kept Bitcoin in a narrow price range over the past few months. No one has yet proven a real threat to network security, but the debate itself only fuels the long-standing rivalry in the industry.
My take: Schiff's statements are a classic example of defending one's own position after a series of failed predictions. However, his point that HODL without taking profits is not always the optimal strategy deserves attention. In conditions of volatility and market cyclicality, the ability to exit a position in time is no less important than the ability to enter one. As for AI — for now, it is more of a factor of market noise than a real technological threat to Bitcoin.