Exclusive Interview: Peter Schiff Compares Bitcoin to Cigarettes, Says BTC Has “No Real Value”

American economist and prominent gold advocate Peter Schiff didn’t hold back his criticisms of Bitcoin (BTC) during an exclusive interview at Binance Blockchain Week 2025 in Dubai, where the annual event drew hundreds of thousands of attendees from around the world.

Schiff headlined the conference’s most anticipated session, a gold vs. Bitcoin debate with Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ). While Schiff remains one of crypto’s most vocal skeptics, he is preparing to launch a tokenized gold payment system designed to modernize how physical gold can circulate as money.

Before stepping onstage, Schiff sat down with Cryptonews to break down why he still believes Bitcoin is destined to fail and why tokenized gold, not digital scarcity, represents the future of sound money.

Great meeting & chatting with @PeterSchiff today at @binance blockchain week! #Binance
Looking forward to the conversation with Peter & @cz_binance tomorrow! pic.twitter.com/DuVcFyMu9S

— Rachel Wolfson (@Rachelwolf00) December 3, 2025

Cryptonews: Why Are You Bearish on Bitcoin?

Peter Schiff: I don’t believe Bitcoin is going to work. Yes, there have been times when I thought the price was going to go up, but that is separate from my ultimate understanding of what Bitcoin is and where the price is generally going.

Bitcoin’s price is a function of the people who wish to gamble on it. You can have a period of time where people want to buy Bitcoin, and the people who own the asset don’t want to sell it, and then the price goes up. We’ve obviously had tremendous BTC price appreciation over the years.

But it’s really interesting that Bitcoin peaked at the same time as gold. If Bitcoin is being portrayed as some digital equivalent of gold, the best way to price Bitcoin would be in terms of gold. But in terms of gold, Bitcoin is still considerably below where gold was four years ago.

If I was really into Bitcoin, this would cause me to question the whole narrative. Why is Bitcoin lower than gold was four years ago, despite all the hype around Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, Bitcoin treasury companies, and electing a pro-Bitcoin U.S. president?

So, why is Bitcoin still lower than gold was four years ago? And if Bitcoin can’t catch up now, why will it go up in the future?

CN: Is there another reason why you think Bitcoin isn’t going to work?

PS: Bitcoin can’t work as money because it doesn’t have any intrinsic value. And it won’t work as a store of value because you can’t store what you don’t have, right? An asset must possess value to be a store of value. Bitcoin has a price, but you can’t store the price.

Also, the price of BTC is subject to market forces only. This means you never know what the price of Bitcoin is going to be worth in the future. It’s all dependent on the people who wish to buy Bitcoin versus the people not willing to sell it.

If you bought Bitcoin years ago you could sell it at a much higher price, but that still doesn’t make it a store of value.

CN: How would you define “store of value?”

PS: Gold is a store of value. For instance, there’s gold in my watch. At $4,000 for an ounce of gold, there’s about $20,000 worth of actual gold in this watch. Somebody could melt this watch down and then use the gold—that is why gold is a store of value.

Also, the value that gold has in one year could remain over hundreds and thousands of years. People would still be able to use the gold to do all the things that you could do with it today. Do you really think the value that gold has as a metal is going to disappear?

There’s a shelf life on gold. Gold is worth just as much when it’s 10 years old as when it is brand new. It doesn’t matter when I take the gold out of the mine. The gold that I mined today has the same value as gold that was mined a hundred years ago – the value is stored.

Bitcoin doesn’t have any value today because there is no real use for it. There’s no demand for it. There’s no industrial use for Bitcoin. People don’t need Bitcoin to make products.

In fact, many people use gold as a hedge against inflation. They own gold, and they hedge it in case it drops. No one’s doing that with Bitcoin. There’s no actual end user of Bitcoin.

CN: How would you then describe Bitcoin?

PS: I describe Bitcoin as being the cigarettes of money. Cigarettes can be considered as money because people smoke and that’s why they are able to circulate. The GIs used cigarettes as money after World War II, and cigarettes function as money in prisons.

If someone accepts cigarettes as a medium of exchange—even if they don’t smoke because they know that they can give them to someone else—that is what gives those cigarettes value. But, if there are no smokers, then the cigarettes become worthless—and so that is what I think about Bitcoin.