Peter Schiff urges ETH-to-BTC swap as Ethereum hits $3,700

Controversial economist and known crypto critic Peter Schiff has rekindled the Bitcoin vs. Ethereum debate in a tweet encouraging investors to ditch the latter and invest in the former instead.

This comes after the price of ETH broke through its previous peak at $3,700, a new milestone since January 2024 on the back of healthy institutional inflows and a resurgence in market confidence.

In an X post, Schiff cautioned that testing the waters for Ethereum would be pointless, as it would just be another phony bubble amid a greater bear market against Bitcoin. 

He wrote, “Ether is back near the upper end of its trading range again. If you own any, this is a great time to sell. As much as it pains me to say, selling Ether and buying Bitcoin with the proceeds is a better trade than holding Ether.”. Bitcoin was the superior trade because Ethereum tended to follow, he said.

Schiff said he used his head, not his heart or gut, to analyze charts. In response to his critics, he clarified that he was also bearish on Bitcoin and thought Ethereum was even more structurally unsound as more competitors entered the smart contract and decentralized finance (DeFi) spaces.

He contended that Ethereum no longer had a utility monopoly; meanwhile, despite its faults, Bitcoin had retained the perception of digital gold. He felt that Ethereum’s narrative and use case were getting diluted.

Ethereum surges on ETF inflows and corporate DeFi deals

Unlike Schiff’s onslaught, the latest rip on Ether results from strong play in the crypto space. ETH rallied over $3,700 amid record inflows into spot Ethereum ETFs. These products are a magnet for large institutional investors who consider Ether a credible investment to earn a return on.

The token has surged more than 25% over the past week, driven higher by both technical momentum and a bit of fundamental news. Ethereum has been flat over the past year, gaining just 7% in the recent trend of Ether’s price, a sign that growth is accelerating.

Public companies have been part of the problem, too. BitMine and SharpLink Gaming are the latest companies to join the game of corporate Ether treasuries. Even more impressive, SharpLink has well over 1B in ETH alone, and they have publicly stated they will stake and run in support of the network to generate passive income.

Those kinds of moves suggest that institutions increasingly believe in Ethereum’s long-term prospects even as Bitcoin skeptics like Schiff continue to wonder whether it has legs.

Crypto fans fire back at Schiff

The crypto community fired back at Schiff’s claims. SharpLink Gaming, one of the companies with large ETH reserves, even edited Schiff’s original X post to advocate for staking Ethereum instead of dumping positions. The shift rebutted and offered a savvy sales pitch for their treasury strategy.

Analyst Benjamin Cowen also chipped in on the subject through a long ETH/BTC market chart tweet. He went on to claim that Schiff’s warning was a case of too little too late, adding that the Ethereum-to-Bitcoin ratio probably had already bottomed before Schiff made his comments. 

Schiff has made waves in the crypto world before. A staunch backer of gold and critic of digital currencies, he has often been at loggerheads with the crypto community. His more recent remarks are unlikely to change the minds of Ethereum bulls, though they certainly have re-ignited the debate about the fate of the world’s largest crypto assets.

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