A lot of libertarians and contrarian investors who are staunch critics of bitcoin make a few points: bitcoin has no intrinsic value, no one can physically own a bitcoin and the government and major financial institutions will clamp down on the digital currency in the near future.
One of bitcoin’s detractors is Marc Faber, legendary investor and publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, participated in a webinar hosted by GoldCom on Friday in which he discussed a variety of issues, including monetary policy, precious metals, gold manipulation and the rise of bitcoin.
When discussing bitcoin, Faber, who called for the 1987 stock market crash, the housing bubble and an array of other traumatic market events, he admitted that he doesn’t know the value of bitcoin and that he would rather own gold.
“I don’t know the value of a bitcoin. I own gold because when the system breaks down, I want to have some cash,” stated Faber. “With a bitcoin, there is a scenario where the system breaks down and you have no internet access and then what is the value of your bitcoin?”
This isn’t the first time that Faber has spoken negatively about bitcoin.
Earlier this week, Faber appeared with finance author James Rickards at the WWD Conference in Melbourne, Australia and briefly mentioned bitcoin. He reiterated that one of his primary concerns is how reliant bitcoin could be if Internet access suddenly disappears in the event of an economic collapse or electric networks malfunction.
Essentially, it’s important to understand technology risks and refrain from investing in bitcoin, emerging digital currencies and digital gold formats.
Late last year, Faber told CNBC that he believes everything from stocks and bonds to bitcoins and farmland “are in a massive speculative bubble” that will eventually burst. He argued at the time that the market could go up another 20 percent and rise even more, but it’s inevitable that there will be crash.
Also, in January, Faber spoke with Bloomberg News explaining it’s very difficult to value the cryptocurrency and investors can value gold, silver, platinum and other precious metals to a certain extent.
“I prefer physical gold and silver, platinum to bitcoin. Bitcoin can have a lot of competition. Gold, silver, platinum – they have no competition,” said Faber. “How do you value a bitcoin? I can value gold to some extent and compare say gold to the quantity of money that is floating around the world, to the wealth increase, and to the monetary base increase, to the credit increase, and so forth and so on, and to the production costs. So I have an idea of where gold should be. I’m not sure because prices overshoot. How do you value Netflix? Is it overpriced or under-priced? Is Tesla overpriced, underpriced?”
At the time of this writing, bitcoin is trading at just under $450.
