Peter Schiff, the well-known economist, financial broker, and gold bug, took the crypto community in a blow by announcing that he has lost access to his Bitcoin wallet making his BTC assets shockingly worthless. On January 19, 2020, through his official Twitter handle, Peter affirmed that his crypto password has become invalid and all his BTC holdings have lost their market value.
I just lost all the #Bitcoin I have ever owned. My wallet got corrupted somehow and my password is no longer valid. So now not only is my Bitcoin intrinsically worthless; it has no market value either. I knew owning Bitcoin was a bad idea, I just never realized it was this bad! pic.twitter.com/6SJvDJOZU6
— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) January 19, 2020
Disappointed with the sudden loss of his crypto assets, Peter quoted in his post an unwelcoming remark about Bitcoin and its security. He added that “I knew owning Bitcoin was a bad idea, I just never realized it was this bad!”
The news garnered the attention of the biggest players and industrialists of the crypto arena who jumped into the matter, giving their take on the matter. Some of the leading crypto industrialists who were the first to give in their response included Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Morgan Creek Digital partner Anthony Pompliano, etc. Vitalik angrily responded to the people who blamed Peter for being irresponsible towards the safety of his crypto assets. He stated that it becomes undeniably important to design an efficient wallet system that offers the best security results.
Disappointed at people replying to this with "crypto is what it is, it's your job to be super-careful and write down backup seeds in three places". We can and should create better wallet tech to make security easier.
Eg. here's a social recovery ERC WIP: https://t.co/tuSbHhXKgd https://t.co/hCBAJKbK41
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 20, 2020
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Schiff has always kept a critical view of digital currencies and has strongly delivered his thoughts through his tweets and posts. In a recent Twitter post, Peter mocked that according to him, marijuana is more useful than digital currencies. Peter had to face a major setback when his claims of Bitcoin prices going down crashed in reality. The gold bug predicted that the BTC price will fall to $1000 worth, however, in contrast to his claims, BTC crossed $8,500 worth. While Bitcoin enjoyed a surge, the gold values slipped by 4% further rubbishing Peter’s claims.
Interestingly, this is not for the first time that customers have lost access to their digital assets. In 2019, customers of Quadriga CX crypto exchange lost access to their assets and wallets carrying holdings worth $145 million in an unfavorable incident.
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In a follow-up tweet, Peter stated that as the Bitcoin assets lost were gifted to him, and the entire incident was “not that great a tragedy” for him. “My plan was to HODL and go down with the ship anyway. The difference is that my ship sank before Bitcoin,” he remarked.
