Global Financial Markets Struggling: Will Bitcoin Become a Safe Haven Asset?

As the British pound collapses, bond prices decline, and interest rates increase, Digital Currency Group CEO Barry Silbert says that bitcoin will become the preferred safe-haven asset.

As stock markets tanked on Sep. 27, 2022, with the S&P 500 down by 1% by the end of the day and the tech-heavy Nasdaq down 0.6% on Monday following higher reported yields for 10-year Treasury notes, gold maximalist and bitcoin bear Peter Schiff predicts the U.S. Federal Reserve will follow in the footsteps of its U.K. counterpart and introduce quantitative easing.

“The Bank of England has already pivoted. As collapsing #bond prices and rising rates threatened a financial crisis, the BOA announced a new QE program to print pounds and buy #gilts. Record UK #inflation will now soar. Which central bank will blink next? Hint, it rhymes with Ted,” Schiff tweeted.

Schiff, known colloquially as the “gold bug,” has been a vocal critic of bitcoin, choosing instead to pitch gold as the superior inflation-resistant safe haven asset.

While Schiff’s prediction of the 2008 financial crisis came true, his views on inflation as an increase in monetary and asset prices leading to consumer price increases have been criticized by Nobel-Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who believes in the Consumer Price Index as the measure of inflation. Krugman believes that the Fed’s money-printing exercises are not used to pay government bills in a country like Argentina but rather to keep prices rising at a predictable rate of about 2% each year. Hence the effect of inflation in those countries is not comparable to the U.S.

Still haven’t reached critical mass

On the other hand, DCG CEO Barry Silbert tweeted that the world’s largest cryptocurrency would become the world’s new safe haven asset amidst broader macroeconomic turmoil.