Schiff’s Bitcoin Woes: A Tale of 30% Decline and 11.5% Schemes!

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Last year, at the Bitcoin gala in Las Vegas, Peter Schiff, that paragon of financial foresight, advised the attendees to sell their BTC holdings with the enthusiasm of a man warning against the perils of cake. At the time, the cryptocurrency was trading at a lofty $110,000, buoyed by the delirious hype of Bitcoin treasury companies, a narrative as thrilling as a detective story.

Now, with the 2026 gathering in full swing, BTC is trading near $77,000, and Schiff, ever the prophet of doom, insists the price dip proves the new “digital credit” pitch is as viable as a teapot’s ability to fly.

What Schiff Said Then, What He’s Saying Now, and Why the Gap Matters

At the 2025 conference, Schiff took to the stage with the gravitas of a man who had just discovered the secret to eternal youth. He told the crowd to sell, while they were deep in the Bitcoin treasury company narrative, a tale so compelling it could make a stone weep.

A year on, the asset is down about 30%, and the hot new pitch at the 2026 event is “digital credit,” which, according to Schiff, will go nowhere too. “Last year, the hype was Bitcoin treasury companies near the peak,” he wrote on X, “This year, it’s digital credit, which will soon blow up.”

“Last year, the hype was Bitcoin treasury companies near the peak,” he wrote on X. “This year, it’s digital credit, which will soon blow up.”

The economist also ran the numbers on Strategy’s Bitcoin accumulation. A year ago, the company owned 2.76% of the total supply. Today it is 3.9%, a 40% increase in the market share, and the price has still fallen. Schiff’s question, put simply, is if Strategy gets to 5% by next year’s conference, why would that be any different?

Strategy has, in fact, kept buying. On the day the conference began, it picked up another 3,273 BTC for roughly $255 million, bringing its total to 818,334 BTC bought for around $61.8 billion at an average of about $75,500 per BTC.

Schiff has also been targeting Strategy’s STRC preferred stock. In a live X Space on April 23, he called it “an obvious Ponzi scheme” and spent roughly two hours explaining why. His argument was straightforward: STRC pays holders an 11.5% annual yield in monthly cash distributions, and Strategy’s software business does not generate nearly enough income to cover that. So where does the money come from?

“The 11.5% yield on STRC is paid by selling more shares of STRC, and then you get money from new investors to pay old investors,” claimed the gold bug.

Schiff’s Critics Have a Long Memory

The reaction on X was predictable and not especially kind to Schiff. Trader Mr. Anderson posted a thread of screenshots going back to November 2013, when Schiff was warning people off Bitcoin at $764. There are subsequent calls at $566, $3,870, $4,023, $7,220, and $5,341. Bitcoin has multiplied many times over from each of those prices.

“You said that from $700 to $126K,” the post read. “To say, ‘I was right’ after all that tells us everything we need to know about your opinion.”

Analyst Josh Mandell made a different kind of objection:

“You can’t take credit for telling people to take profits on something you never suggested they buy in the first place.”

At the conference itself on April 28, Saylor told the crowd he thinks a supply shock is building. His reasoning is that somewhere between $20 billion and $100 billion in new bank credit could flow into Bitcoin over the next 12 months, from institutions including J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Schwab, Morgan Stanley, and Barclays, against roughly $10 billion of BTC he said is “naturally available for sale.”

His conclusion was that prices should rally and that the rally would pull up Bitcoin treasury stocks and demand for digital credit products along with it.

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2026-04-29 18:54