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July 2, 2018 | 8 years ago today

The Gold Bug vs. the Bitcoiner: Voorhees Defeats Schiff at the Soho ForumThe Gold Bug vs. the Bitcoiner: Voorhees Defeats Schiff at the Soho Forum

Manhattan, July 2018. Two of the loudest hard-money critics of the dollar took the stage at a SoHo theater to argue over which asset would outlast it. Peter Schiff backed gold. Erik Voorhees backed code. They agreed on almost nothing else.

The FormatThe Format

The Soho Forum held Oxford-style debates: the audience voted before speakers began, and again after they finished. The winner was whoever moved more minds, not whoever received the loudest applause. The proposition that night: will Bitcoin eventually replace government fiat money as the world's preferred medium of exchange? Pre-debate tally: 40% yes, 40% no, 20% undecided.

The BackdropThe Backdrop

The timing favored Schiff. Bitcoin had fallen from roughly $20,000 in December 2017 to $6,500 by July 2018, a 65% drop in six months. Schiff had been predicting Bitcoin's collapse since 2013, and the bear market was his closing argument made flesh. Voorhees walked in as the underdog in a room that was, despite everything, still evenly split.

Schiff's CaseSchiff's Case

Schiff's argument rested on one claim: money requires a reliable store of value, and Bitcoin fails that test. Bitcoin's price swings make it useless for pricing goods or signing contracts. People do not spend it; they hoard it hoping to sell higher. He called it "fool's gold": speculation dressed up as monetary philosophy. For good measure, he added that governments could ban Bitcoin far more easily than they could confiscate gold held abroad.

Voorhees' CounterVoorhees' Counter

Voorhees had a direct response to the volatility charge, put plainly: "I remember when it was a big deal when Bitcoin moved 50%. Today it's a big deal when it moves 10%. In a few years it'll be a big deal when it moves 2-3%." Volatility self-corrects as adoption deepens. He pressed the properties gold could not match: censorship resistance, borderless transfers without intermediaries, and a fixed supply no government can inflate. These were not points Schiff rebutted directly.

The Room MovesThe Room Moves

Post-debate tally: 55% yes, 31% no. Voorhees had shifted 15 percentage points toward Bitcoin in a room already leaning toward it, in the worst Bitcoin bear market in years, against a man who had spent years predicting Bitcoin's demise. The Soho Forum declared him the winner. The full debate is on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8R71WGO3qU) and has been watched hundreds of thousands of times.

What Came AfterWhat Came After

Both men agreed that fiat currency was broken and would eventually fail. They disagreed only on what replaces it. In 2022, Schiff's Puerto Rico-based bank was shut down by regulators. Bitcoin was still running.

Part of an ongoing series on Bitcoin history. This event falls on July 2, 2018.