ZeroHedge will host a weird gold v. bitcoin debate today

ZeroHedge, Daniel Ivandjiiski’s popular current events blog and news brand, will moderate a debate tonight between two celebrity gold bugs versus two crypto promoters.

This evening at 7pm EDT, ZeroHedge will host gold bug Peter Schiff and ‘Dr. Doom’ Nouriel Roubini on the anti-crypto side, and Anthony Scaramucci and Erik Voorhees on the pro-crypto side.

The debate, which will stream on YouTube, will be moderated by Crypto Banter channel owner Ran Neuner. Neuner is part of Mario Nawfal’s team that rose to prominence thanks in part to Elon Musk’s endorsements of their Twitter (now X) Spaces. Neuner follows a trend of ZeroHedge using Nawfal’s team to host celebrity debates. Indeed, Nawfal himself has hosted a ZeroHedge debate.

The panelists have debated their pro-gold and pro-crypto arguments on social media for years and if they continue their tradition of talking over each other, Neuner will have to keep a firm grip on the mic controls.

Read more: FBI and SEC likely investigating Mario Nawfal after wave of complaints

Four conflicted, talkative, bombastic debaters

• Erik Voorhees is best known as the founder of ShapeShift, a digital exchange with an interesting history that included transforming into a DAO to dodge know-your-customer and anti-money laundering laws. Even with that dodge, it had to pay a settlement to the Securities and Exchange Commission for listing unregistered securities.
• Anthony Scaramucci is a former senior White House staffer-turned-founder of SkyBridge Capital, a hedge fund that made money from some lucky breaks. For example, the fund manager received a phone call from Sam Bankman-Fried’s father seemingly just in time to warn him that FTX was going to collapse. It helps to have the dad of the founder of the largest pyramid scheme since Enron tip you off prior to its collapse, unlike millions of blindsided customers.
• Peter Schiff has frequently bashed bitcoin and has called it worthless for years. Indeed, seven years ago, he predicted bitcoin would go to $0.00. He’s managed a gold fund that has underperformed gold for over a decade.
• Nouriel Roubini is an anti-bitcoin economist frequently referred to as ‘Dr. Doom.’ He predicted bitcoin would collapse to $0 four years ago.

Neither gold nor crypto have displaced fiat

Roubini and Schiff support gold as the world’s preeminent store of value. Because gold isn’t easy to subdivide, assay, or carry for use as a medium of exchange, Schiff repeatedly endorsed Canadian debit card company GoldMoney as the best way to use gold for day-to-day transactions.

GoldMoney and its gold-backed debit card, however, never gained popularity. GoldMoney’s share price languishes 80% below its all-time high set seven years ago.

To be fair, cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are also not easy to use for day-to-day transactions without relying on a trusted third party. Thousands of crypto merchant service companies and point-of-sale terminals have gone bankrupt. Although crypto is easy to subdivide, assay, carry, and transact on-chain, burdensome financial regulations turn its acceptance, tax treatment, and conversion into fiat an accounting compliance nightmare.

Obviously, Voorhees and Scaramucci are likely to vocalize their typical arguments for crypto like self-sovereignty, censorship-resistance, and unconfiscatability. Roubini and Schiff, meanwhile, might take a jab at Voorhees for running a company that allegedly broke US financial regulations. Voorhees’ company ShapeShift paid a $275,000 penalty to settle SEC claims that it dealt unregistered crypto securities.

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