CZ slams Peter Schiff's tokenized gold 'trust-me' scam during heated debate

A very classy live financial cage match went down in Dubai at Binance Blockchain Week less than three hours ago when fighter Changpeng “CZ” Zhao finally faced fighter Peter Schiff to prove that Bitcoin is indeed better than gold.

After shaking hands and hugging each other, as well as making jokes we didn’t really get, CZ immediately attacked Peter’s “obsession with tokenized gold,” saying it relies too much on trust and central control.

Peter started the whole thing by doing what he now does best; dismissing Bitcoin entirely, once again saying that it’s nothing more than “a speculative asset” with no built-in value. “What makes Bitcoin worthless, as far as I’m concerned, is not the fact that I can’t touch it,” Peter said.

CZ simply watched with a smile and nodded. Peter continued: “It’s that you can’t do anything with it. It doesn’t have utility beyond the fact that… I can transfer it to you, and you can transfer it to somebody else.”

He kept hammering that Bitcoin has no function, and tried to frame it as some kind of hot potato.

Then he turned to what he believes actually works; tokenized gold. “When I transfer tokenized gold to you, I’ve transferred gold. I’ve transferred the ownership of the gold,” Peter said. His problem with Bitcoin was apparently about what he called “actual transfer of ownership.”

But CZ, the crypto community’s fighter, simply brought out a piece of gold from his pocket, held it up and said, “With this, it’s not easy for me to take it across countries. Whereas Bitcoin… has actually gone up in value over the last 15 years.”

Peter abruptly accuses Binance of running a casino

Peter didn’t let it go. He pushed hard on Bitcoin being nothing more than a giant bet. “More people are gambling in Bitcoin today than were gambling in it a couple of years ago,” he said, painting it like a risky coin toss, not a serious asset. He then went straight at CZ, saying, “You’re running a pretty big casino.”

And he brought numbers to twist the knife. “Bitcoin today buys 40% fewer ounces of gold than it did four years ago,” he said, trying to show that Bitcoin had actually lost value when measured in gold. He listed off the hype Bitcoin has gotten over the years: “We had ETFs… celebrity endorsements… the NFT craze… El Salvador. We’ve had all of this promotion… and the price has gone down.”

His whole case? The excitement didn’t deliver results.

But CZ wasn’t having it. He clapped back, saying people use virtual things all the time that hold real value.

“When you use X, X is completely virtual. There’s nothing physical about it. But X has value,” CZ said.

“The Internet is virtual… but it has value.” He made it clear that Bitcoin’s value comes from its portability and global reach, especially when compared to something like gold. Then, taking aim at Peter’s casino insult, he shot back: “When you reach this level of like hundreds of millions of people, it’s no longer a casino.”

Schiff drags Michael Saylor and Strategy into the mess

Peter didn’t stop with CZ. He dragged Michael Saylor into the mess, going after his company Strategy’s debt-fueled Bitcoin binge. “Michael Saylor is coming out here; Bitcoin is going to be $10 million a Bitcoin,” Peter said. Then he challenged the logic: “Well, why isn’t it there now? If it’s really that valuable, the market would adjust the price now.” He questioned why the market hadn’t already priced it in.

He also slammed the way Strategy built its position. “We got… Strategy that borrowed $40 billion to buy Bitcoin, or issued stock and debt to buy $40 billion,” he said.

According to Peter, that kind of leverage just pumped the price. Then he mocked Saylor’s certainty: “He acts like you just buy Bitcoin and you’re guaranteed to make all this money. It’s a sure thing. Go out, mortgage your house… put everything you have.”

Peter shifted back to his gold pitch. He promoted his own tokenized-gold project. “Right now… you can buy physical gold and silver, and we store it for you… it’s allocated gold,” he said. His argument? You don’t need governments, just a trustworthy private firm to tokenize real gold. “Any private entity that has a good reputation and is trustworthy can tokenize gold… they’re all fungible because gold is gold.”

Peter closed by warning that young people would eventually turn on Bitcoin: “Young people will like gold more because their friends will have lost a lot of money in Bitcoin.” CZ just dropped adoption stats in response: “Three hundred million people on Binance alone all have some kind of Bitcoin.”

That’s one way to end a debate.

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