Yesterday, Live Bitcoin News reported that Peter Schiff – a longtime bitcoin skeptic and advocate of gold – was claiming that his cryptocurrency wallet had been corrupted. That his password was no longer working and that he could no longer access his funds.
Is Peter Schiff Wrong?
However, several analysts are emerging to state that Schiff’s words are not true; that he simply forgot his password and failed to back up his crypto stash.
Schiff has often spoken negatively of bitcoin, which led many to wonder why he even carried BTC in the first place. Schiff has claimed that the digital money was gifted to him rather than purchased by his own hand, and that the money lost is no big deal considering his feelings that crypto will not go anywhere.
However, he still took the time to vent his frustrations on Twitter, writing:
I just lost all the bitcoin I have ever owned. My wallet got corrupted somehow and my password is no longer valid.
Too bad many analysts don’t believe him. They claim that this is simply a case of “forgotten information,” and that Schiff didn’t care about the bitcoin he owned enough to keep it secure.
Former analyst at popular crypto exchange e-Toro Mati Greenspan explains:
It’s a completely ridiculous claim. Peter must have forgotten his password and neglected to save the backup info.
Individuals echoing this sentiment include blockchain pioneer and managing director of Yeoman’s Capital David Johnson. He says there’s no such thing as “corrupting a wallet,” stating:
There is no ‘corrupting’ a wallet, in the sense that if you have the seed phase, you can always just import it into a new wallet… A database can get corrupted, but bitcoin and other blockchains are based on private keys. Those are the recovery seeds that allow you to import or generate a set of addresses in a wallet. The wallet itself is just a visual representation of the token you have imported to it from the private keys.
His words suggest a whole new side to Schiff. Not only does he not care about bitcoin or cryptocurrencies… He also doesn’t seem to know how they work.
Schiff later defended himself on social media and stood by his previous claim, stating that the problem does not stem from forgotten login information. He explained:
Since I know my password and it doesn’t work, there’s no way to guess a new random password that may or may not unlock my wallet.
There’s Doubt Everywhere
Still, Schiff is faced with doubt wherever he goes. Another such person casting a raised eyebrow in his direction is Erik Voorhees, the CEO of Shape Shift, a crypto trading platform. Voorhees states:
He forgot [the password] and never recorded phrase. [Bitcoin wallet corruption] is not a thing.
