Trump as Tulip King? Peter Schiff Slams Crypto Hype as 21st Century Tulip Mania

Gold bug Peter Schiff just dropped a financial history grenade—comparing crypto's wild rally to the 17th century tulip bubble. Ouch.

Schiff's take? Today's Bitcoin maximalists are yesterday's Dutch flower traders—blinded by speculative frenzy while pretending it's 'different this time.'

The irony? Schiff's been wrong before—but so were the guys who bought tulip bulbs at peak madness. Place your bets.

Meanwhile, Wall Street quietly loads up on BTC ETFs—because nothing fuels a bubble like institutional FOMO dressed as 'asset allocation.'

‘Decentralized Ponzi scheme’

Schiff dismissed recent cryptocurrency bills as attempts to “cloak Bitcoin—nothing more than a decentralized Ponzi scheme—in the trappings of legitimacy.” He accused industry insiders of using legislation to hype digital assets while planning exits at higher prices.

“The industry is using them to HYPE Bitcoin and other cryptos so insiders can cash out at higher prices. It’s a legislative low point,” Schiff wrote.

The economist’s criticism extends to stablecoin initiatives, which he views as ineffective tools for maintaining dollar dominance.

Schiff argued that stablecoins can be backed by any fiat currency and provide no inherent stability advantage.

“The hype that stablecoins will help secure the U.S. dollar’s dominance in global trade is nonsense,” Schiff stated. He emphasized that dollar-backed stablecoins are only as stable as the underlying currency, warning that “that ‘stability’ will soon give way.”

‘The Madness of Crowds’

Schiff invoked Charles Mackay’s “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” to compare Bitcoin and digital assets to the Dutch tulip bubble.

He quoted Mackay’s observation that “every age has its peculiar folly” and identified digital tokens as the current era’s delusion. Schiff quoted:

“They go mad in herds, and only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

Americans haven’t learned from history — they just repeat the mistakes. As Mackay wrote in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, “Every age has its peculiar folly,” and ours is digital tokens backed by nothing but collective delusion. His quotes about the…

The Dutch tulip bubble of the 1630s was a speculative frenzy in which tulip bulb prices soared to extreme heights before collapsing overnight, leaving many investors with worthless contracts. Often cited as the first recorded financial bubble, it has become a lasting symbol of irrational market mania.

Schiff noted that Dutch society once neglected ordinary industry for tulip trading and drew direct parallels to Bitcoin adoption.

“Just replace tulip with Bitcoin, and that sums it up perfectly,” Schiff concluded.

The economist’s warnings reveal his broader skepticism about monetary systems that are not backed by gold and his belief that cryptocurrency represents a dangerous speculative distraction from sound economic policy.