Peter Schiff, an economist, gold advocate, and ardent crypto skeptic, has unveiled a collaborative nonfungible token (NFT) art collection on Bitcoin, which will soon be auctioned off.
People are generally perplexed, amused, welcoming — particularly Ordinals supporters — or eager to point out the hypocrisy.
Schiff has actively criticized cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, for years, with his arguments revolving around the notion that Bitcoin is a valueless Ponzi scheme.
Schiff unveiled the “Golden Triumph” collection on May 27 via a Twitter thread in collaboration with one of his “favorite artists,” known by the alias Market Price.
“This collaboration features the original painting ‘Golden Triumph’ as well as a series of prints and Ordinals inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain,” he wrote.
Golden Triumph consists of one oil painting on linen depicting a hand holding a gold bar, fifty prints on archival paper describing the same image, and fifty digital versions encoded as Ordinal NFTs on Bitcoin.
The collection will be auctioned off in two parts, beginning on June 2 and concluding on June 9. For the Ordinals, the highest bidder will receive number one, and the next 49 highest bidders will receive numbers two through fifty in descending order.
Schiff appears to have awoken to a use case for blockchain technology, namely the verifiable ownership of assets such as art via non-fungible tokens.
The user @LoneStartBitcoin asked in response to Schiff’s tweet, “So… it’s valuable to put your ‘gold’ inscriptions on Bitcoin, but bitcoin [BTC] itself is not valuable?”
Schiff replied, “Correct.”
In addition to his disdain for cryptocurrencies, Schiff has criticized NFTs multiple times.
Schiff, in a March 2021 blog post, referred to NFTs as “fake assets” that offer nothing more than ownership of a digital image that can be “replicated endlessly” online.
“However, even as the image’s owner, you cannot restrict access to it. “Since the file has been duplicated thousands of times, anyone with internet access can view it as much as you,” he wrote.
Like former U.S. President Donald Trump, who vehemently criticized cryptocurrencies on multiple occasions before his involvement with NFTs, the sudden shift in sentiment parallels a similar change in Trump’s attitude.
In December, Trump teased a “major announcement” that MAGA supporters believed to be political before revealing the licensed Trump Digital Trading Cards collection.
