Peter Schiff Accidentally Proves the Internet Is Worthless
A modest proposal for finally unplugging civilization
There is a certain genre of argument against Bitcoin that has become so familiar, so ritualized, and so gloriously unintentionally funny that it deserves to be studied as a literary form. At the center of this art stands Peter Schiff, tireless gold evangelist, professional Bitcoin scold, and perhaps the greatest accidental critic of the entire digital age.
Schiff’s case against Bitcoin often goes something like this:
You can’t eat it.
You can’t do anything with it.
It has no intrinsic value.
It’s just code.
It’s not real.
It only has value because people believe it does.
It has no long history.
It wastes energy.
It’s speculative and volatile.
At first glance, these sound like objections to Bitcoin. But with only a tiny bit of effort, one discovers that these are not really arguments against Bitcoin at all. They are arguments against the internet, software, digital networks, modern finance, intellectual property, cloud computing, and possibly the concept of civilization after 1995.
Well, this is awkward. Let’s destroy each and every one of these points and collectively laugh at them.
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You can’t eat it
A devastating point. Truly. You also cannot eat:
the internet
email
a spreadsheet
a domain name
an operating system
a search engine
a video call
a stock certificate
a software license
an API
And yet millions of people somehow continue to derive value from these things without frying them in butter.
The “you can’t eat it” test is a wonderful standard because it instantly eliminates most of the modern economy. You cannot eat Adobe Photoshop. You cannot eat AWS. You cannot eat a TCP/IP packet. You cannot eat a patent. You cannot eat a password manager. Therefore, by the Schiff Standard, these should all be worth approximately zero.
This is good to know. Somebody should inform the market.
You can’t do anything with it
This one is even better, because the internet is basically the grand cathedral of things you “can’t do anything with” until you notice that nearly everything runs on it.
What exactly can you do with the internet? Only trivial things, such as:
communicate instantly across continents
move information at near light speed
run businesses
publish books
build software
coordinate logistics
stream media
educate billions of people
replace entire industries
create global marketplaces
Other than that, not much.
The complaint that something digital “does nothing” usually means one of two things: either the speaker is ignoring its use entirely, or they are using an absurdly narrow definition of use that excludes communication, computation, settlement, coordination, and storage because those do not arrive in wheelbarrows.
It has no intrinsic value
The phrase “intrinsic value” has done remarkable service as a rhetorical fog machine. It sounds deep, ancient, and wise. It is also often used in a way that immediately collapses when applied to almost anything people actually value.
What is the intrinsic value of the internet?
Not the poetic answer. The literal one.
What is the intrinsic value of:
a routing table
a packet
a DNS record
a TLS certificate
a Git commit
a JPEG
a database entry
Very little, in isolation. And yet in aggregate, these things coordinate economies, institutions, and daily life.
It turns out value can be emergent. A network can have value because people use it, rely on it, build on it, and cannot easily replace it. This is not some embarrassing loophole. This is how most important systems work.
If “intrinsic value” means “I can hold it in my hand and admire its atoms,” then yes, software is in trouble. So is language, law, mathematics, accounting, and your bank balance.
It’s just code
Yes. And?
The internet is just code. Your phone is code wrapped in aluminum. Your bank is code wearing a necktie. Air traffic systems are code. Hospitals are code. Power grids are code. Satellites are code plus confidence.
Calling something “just code” in 2026 is a bit like standing in the middle of Manhattan and declaring, with enormous seriousness, “These buildings are just piles of concrete and steel.”
Correct. That is how systems work.
“Just code” is one of those phrases that hopes the word “just” can do the work of an actual argument. It cannot. Code is not fake because it is abstract. Code is how abstraction takes operational form.
It’s not real
This is probably the crown jewel.
The internet is not real in the sense that a brick is real. Neither is a corporation, a trademark, a treaty, a debt obligation, a tax lien, a university degree, a brokerage account, or the number in your checking account.
And yet all of these can dramatically alter your life.
The modern world is built from layers of shared abstraction. Some are written on paper. Some are enforced by courts. Some are maintained by software. Some are maintained by consensus. Some are maintained by a server farm humming somewhere in a cold place.
“Not real” usually means “not physical,” which is a hilariously outdated standard in an economy where intangible assets routinely dominate tangible ones.
Try telling a software company its source code is “not real.” Then watch how real the lawyers become.
It only has value because people believe it does
At last, we arrive at the accidental self-own of self-owns.
Yes. Correct. That is how almost all large-scale human systems function.
Laws work because people believe they do. Brands have value because people believe they do. A college degree has value because people believe it does. A social network has value because people believe other people will continue to use it.
The internet itself is valuable because billions of people believe the protocols, standards, institutions, and services layered on top of it are worth depending on.
This is not a flaw. This is the basic operating system of society.
When critics say, “Bitcoin only has value because people believe in it,” they often seem to think they have uncovered a fatal weakness. In reality, they have rediscovered coordination.
It has no history
Neither did the internet once.
This is one of the all-time great arguments for being permanently late to everything.
In the early days, the internet had no long history. Neither did cars. Neither did airplanes. Neither did smartphones. Neither did streaming. Neither did cloud computing. Neither did the web itself, which many brilliant people once regarded as a toy, a fad, or a chaos machine for nerds.
If lack of history were a disqualifier, every important technology would die in infancy.
The best part of this argument is that it becomes less useful every year while being delivered with the exact same confidence. “It has no history” is a time-sensitive objection pretending to be timeless wisdom.
It wastes energy
A fascinating complaint to level against digital systems while standing waist-deep in the energy consumption of the modern world.
The internet uses enormous amounts of energy. Data centers use energy. Streaming uses energy. Cloud infrastructure uses energy. Search uses energy. Video calls use energy. AI definitely uses energy. Your thousandth open browser tab about sourdough hydration uses energy.
Energy use is not the same thing as waste. The question is whether the output justifies the input.
Civilization runs on converting energy into outcomes humans value. That is true for steel, shipping, refrigeration, semiconductor fabs, hospitals, server farms, and communications networks.
If “uses energy” is enough to dismiss a system, unplug everything and let us return honorably to yelling across valleys.
It’s speculative and volatile
The dot-com bubble would like a word.
The existence of speculation around a technology does not prove the technology is useless. It proves humans are humans. They overhype real things, fake things, semi-real things, and occasionally tulips. The presence of mania tells you exactly one thing: people are bad at pricing the future.
The internet absolutely had a speculative bubble. An enormous one. Many companies exploded. Many valuations were nonsense. Many investors got torched. And then, in a shocking development, the internet remained useful.
A bubble can form around nonsense. It can also form around a transformative innovation. These are not mutually exclusive.
A brief and helpful exercise
To save time, here is a simple test for future anti-Bitcoin arguments.
Take the argument and replace “Bitcoin” with:
the internet
software
email
cloud computing
digital payments
online banking
domain names
intellectual property
social networks
If the argument suddenly makes you sound like a man angrily denouncing electricity from a candle shop, it may need work.
Examples:
“Email has no intrinsic value.”
“Cloud computing is just code.”
“Domain names only have value because people believe they do.”
“You can’t eat the internet.”
“Video calls have no history compared to gold.”
“Software wastes energy.”
“APIs are speculative.”
Wonderful. Amazing. Please continue. We are learning so much.
Why this matters
The point is not that Bitcoin and the internet are identical. They are not. The point is that a huge number of lazy anti-Bitcoin arguments are actually lazy anti-digital, anti-tech arguments. They rely on a primitive worldview in which only physical, immediately tangible, directly consumable things can possess durable value.
That worldview is not serious enough for the modern economy.
We live in a civilization where value is regularly created by networks, standards, code, consensus, legal abstractions, and information systems. If your framework cannot account for that, your framework does not get to smugly announce reality’s failure to comply.
It just means your map is old.
In conclusion: unplug everything
If we are to be consistent, we must act boldly.
If you cannot eat it, it is worthless. If it is code, it is fake. If it depends on belief, it is fraud. If it lacks centuries of history, it is unserious. If it uses energy, it is evil. If it is volatile, it is doomed.
Therefore we must immediately abandon:
the internet
software companies
online commerce
remote work
streaming media
cloud infrastructure
electronic records
most of finance
and perhaps language itself, since it too is a consensus system with no intrinsic value beyond human belief
At long last, Peter Schiff has shown us the way.
Not merely beyond Bitcoin.
Beyond the internet.
Beyond modernity.
And all the way back to the comforting solidity of a shiny rock.