Peter Schiff vs. Michael Saylor: Gold Bull Calls Strategy's $STRC a 'Ponzi Scheme'

Gold bull and economist Peter Schiff criticised Strategy's Michael Saylor for allegedly promoting the STRC preferred stock to risk-averse retirees, claiming he assured them that all volatility had been eliminated.

'STRC is down over 5% today, more than 17% below what many retirees paid last month. Almost two years of dividends gone. @Saylor clearly made material misrepresentations,' Schiff wrote in a late Wednesday post on X.

Strategy finances BTC purchases through preferred shares such as STRC and STRF, which convert Bitcoin's projected growth into a perpetual capital base for further accumulation. The STRC preferred stocks pay a variable monthly dividend of 11.5% on an annualised basis.

Note that STRC's price is meant to be anchored at $100. When the preferred stock trades above that level, Strategy could issue more STRC and use the net proceeds to buy additional bitcoin. As of now, Strategy has issued over $3.8 billion worth of the dividend-paying instrument. The company has relied on STRC as an alternative funding source for a while now.

However, Schiff highlighted in a separate X post: 'So far, the low on $STRC is $80. That's a 20% drop in an investment @Saylor promoted as safe, with near-zero volatility. At that price, the current yield for new buyers is 14.4%. Clearly, investors don't believe the dividend is sustainable and expect it to be reduced or suspended.'

Although Schiff never bought into the Bitcoin narrative, he claimed to have always respected different views, but he 'drew a line with @Saylor defrauding investors with his $STRC ponzi scheme and those who covered for him.'

Schiff's views coincide with Saylor's X post about how digital credit is income for investors who believe in Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Didn't Rise With Gold, but It Sure Is Falling With It

One of Schiff's X posts on Wednesday mentioned that Bitcoin prices didn't rise will gold, but are surely falling with it. He mentioned that people expected a gold selloff to rotate money back into Bitcoin. However, that didn't happen because BTC and gold dynamics are different even if the price corrections look similar.

'Gold's selloff is a buying opportunity. Bitcoin's selloff is a bubble deflating,' Schiff had added.

Through additional X posts, Schiff highlighted that gold prices are likely to dip below $4,000 per ounce as silver trades under $60 per ounce, as traders price in interest rate hikes. Although the rate hikes might not occur, if they do increase, it will be too late to control inflation, which is bullish for gold.

'If precious metals traders are right about how aggressive the Fed will get to crush inflation, the stock market should be crashing. If stock traders are right that the Fed is more bark than bite when it comes to rate hikes, gold prices should be soaring. They both can't be right,' according to Schiff.

Lastly, he said that even if the US Federal Reserve is very serious about bringing down inflation to 2% with considerable rate hikes, it will 'do a 180' turn once the stock market accepts the rate hikes and subsequently crashes. He stated that a stock market crash, alongside a real estate crash, poses risks of not only a recession but another major financial crisis.

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