Peter Schiff's Bank Froze: Self-Custody Vindicated
synopsis
Ian and Mandana discuss the crypto crash of mid-2022 through the lens of Peter Schiff's bank in Puerto Rico being frozen by regulators. They use Schiff — a famous gold bug and Bitcoin critic — as a case study for why self-custody matters, drawing parallels between his bank's failure and the Celsius collapse, and arguing that Bitcoin eliminates the need to trust any institution with your money.
quotes
Ian: "You can convert it into 12 words, memorize those 12 words, and no one can touch your money. No regulators, no countries, no Peter Schiff's, no Celsius's. It's your money memorized."
Ian: "If you can get shut down by regulators in a lax jurisdiction, either they're trying to basically extort him... or you couldn't even pass the Puerto Rican regulators."
Ian: "Celsius fell apart. We don't care. We don't even really feel bad, because we try to warn everybody."
Ian: "If your money's in Bitcoin, you don't care which banks are collapsing."
Mandana on schadenfreude: "Being a hater does age you."
Ian on time horizon: "If you buy every day, if your time horizon is 10 years, you don't really care about what's crashing today. You actually want it to crash today."
topics
Peter Schiff's bank frozen by Puerto Rico regulatorsCrypto crash context (Terra Luna, Celsius)Self-custody ("not your keys, not your coin")Gold vs. Bitcoin debateFractional reserve banking in crypto and traditional financeThe schadenfreude of Bitcoin TwitterPotential for traditional bank runs