RE: The article that destroyed Peter Schiffs credibility
I don't think coming out of the gate first means you win. Otherwise myspace would be ruling the world of social media and not facebook. Look at Digg vs. Reddit, Chrome vs. Netscape, IBM vs. the clones, and infinite other examples. While other cryptocurrencies do not yet have the market cap of bitcoin, it does not mean that they never will. By your argument gold is far superior to Bitcoin and always will be because it has a larger market cap (Bitcoin's market cap is a fraction of a percent of gold).
Gold has a proven track record of thousands of years as a store of wealth so I don't think there is any scam in recommending or believing in Gold (and other precious metals). Gold does not have the explosive growth potential that Bitcoin has (the main advantage of precious metals is that they protect you from inflation) but it is foolish to believe that Bitcoin is at this point a safe long term investment. And sure, anybody could have been rich if they invested in Bitcoin at the right time. That's true of anything. The trick is also getting out at the right time.
I think one day the cryptocurrency world will settle on a handful of meaningful options (or maybe more). But I don't think early success means a given cryptocurrency, even Bitcoin, will be successful forever. Personally, I think it will rise to a much higher price than it is at today but at the same time, I'm not convinced that it will not eventually fall back down. Maybe I'm wrong. I look forward to seeing what happens either way.
The Myspace example is not really comparable. Myspace didn't had such a huge community of people pushing it up. When Bitcoin came out many smart people that were knowledgeable about the financial system immediately recognized Bitcoin's potential. These people teamed up and are pushing to make Bitcoin better. How can you compare this to Myspace ? The whole world is pushing to make Bitcoin succeed. The only other crypto that has this privilege is Ethereum. The probability that some random guy discovers something that takes away Bitcoin's marketcap is almost 0 ... he has to beat the smartest and most knowledgabe guys out there. Good luck waiting for this to happen. Bitcoin can only fail if Bitcoin fails; not by getting overtaken by some other coin.
Gold protects against inflation ? Tell that to those people that put their savings in gold when it was at 2000 $. They are on big losses now. Almost 50 % purchasing power lost. The same holds for the silver stackers. Not a hater though. I invested in both too.
I am not against gold or silver. I just keep thinking Peter Schiff is a retard with his anti-Bitcoin view. He is an economist. He should use his brain and logical reasoning when downtalking Bitcoin, not his feelings of trying to get rich trying to sell people his gold. Mark Maloney sells gold too but he sees Bitcoin's potential. Andy Hoffman used to be anti-Bitcoin too, but he completely flipped his opinion. But Peter Schiff is simply behaving like a little stupid kid. I am not saying people should put all their savings in Bitcoin. That would be insane. But it is very smart to diversify in it. As his guest opponent said: if 5 % of gold's marketcap flows into Bitcoin, Bitcoin will be 22.000 $. Imagine buying now 10.000 euro Bitcoin and this happens ... And if the FED keeps smashing down gold and silver, I am sure even more than 5 % will flow into Bitcoin. This was the exact reason why I started to stop investing in gold and silver and moved to Bitcoin.