Peter Schiff, a man who has built a personal brand around calling Bitcoin worthless, just sided with crypto. Sort of.
The gold advocate and persistent digital asset skeptic pushed back against JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s calls for imposing bank-style capital and compliance requirements on stablecoin issuers. Schiff called the proposal “nonsense,” arguing that stablecoin companies and banks operate under fundamentally different models, and treating them the same makes no regulatory sense.
The argument: stablecoins aren’t banks
Schiff’s core point is surprisingly straightforward. Banks operate under a fractional-reserve system, meaning they take deposits and lend out most of that money. That lending activity creates risk, which is why banks get FDIC insurance, capital requirements, and a small library’s worth of compliance obligations.
Stablecoin issuers, by contrast, don’t make loans. The properly run ones take in dollars and park them in US Treasuries. Schiff emphasized that stablecoins backed 100% by dollars and managed conservatively through Treasury investments simply don’t carry the same systemic risk profile as traditional banks.
