Notorious goldbug and Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff just fell victim to one of the classic crypto blunders - the most famous of which is "not your keys, not your crypto" - but only slightly less well-known is this:
Always back up your wallet and keys in a safe place.
All Princess Bride references aside, according to Schiff's tweet, his mobile wallet became corrupted and is no longer recognizing his password.
Rather than ask for help, Schiff blamed Bitcoin for the wallet's corruption and his own failure to take even the most basic of precautions.
"So now not only is my Bitcoin intrinsically worthless; it has no market value either. I knew owning Bitcoin was a bad idea, I just never realized it was this bad!"
Don't get me wrong - it's not like I haven't screwed up and lost crypto. I once lost 4 bitcoins when I did a system rollback of my computer to fix some performance issues. It didn't occur to me until the moment I clicked the button to start the rollback that my wallet files would be among those deleted.
The only difference - aside from the fact that I inevitably felt the pinch of that loss more than Schiff has - is that I didn't blame Bitcoin for the loss. It was my own failure to take backup measures that rendered me incapable of recovering my BTC.
It stung, but I learned the lesson.
A Gift Ungraciously Received
Back in July 2019, Bitcoin proponent Anthony "Pomp" Pompliano outed Schiff as a BTC "hodler" on Twitter, to which the Bitcoin hater admitted he'd been given $100 worth of the cryptocurrency as a gift.
The admission prompted others within the crypto community to gift Schiff with some additional Bitcoin and by the next day, the balance in his wallet address had swelled to 0.124 BTC - worth approximately $1350 at the time.
Most people, on receiving such a gift, would be appreciative and use the opportunity to educate themselves. Not Schiff - he is convinced he already knows everything there is to know about Bitcoin.
Though he did thank the community for their gifts, his graciousness was dampened when he snidely commented, "I guess I'll have to hodl it and go down with the ship."
I have to give Schiff credit for one thing, though - at least he's consistent. Schiff has been calling Bitcoin a bubble and predicting its demise for years and his rhetoric has never changed, regardless of how well the market is doing.
Currently, Schiff's wallet contains just over $1800 in Bitcoin.
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