A one-kilogram gold bar passed from the hands of a certain exchange founder to Peter Schiff, a die-hard gold fan.

The room went silent for three seconds.

This was perhaps the most surreal moment in the crypto world—a longtime Bitcoin critic, Schiff, and the founder of a leading exchange sitting together at the headline debate of a blockchain week. From discussing value storage to payment tools, from philosophical arguments to real-world cases, the atmosphere was intense.

But the most interesting twist: this "Bitcoin skeptic" has launched his own tokenized gold project.

Schiff admitted on stage that he is issuing a tokenized gold product. He also acknowledged, "From a monetary perspective, tokenized gold is indeed easier to carry and divide than physical gold bars."

This statement is almost an admission—that digitization truly makes gold more like "money."

Yet he insisted: Bitcoin has no intrinsic value and relies solely on faith.

The founder's comeback was ruthless—he pulled out a real gold bar worth about $130,000 and slammed it on the table.

Schiff’s first reaction was, "The color doesn’t look quite right, I’ll need to have it tested." This instantly exposed the Achilles’ heel of physical assets: difficult to verify, hard to transport, and even harder to trade.

The founder seized the moment: Bitcoin’s verifiability and transfer efficiency are things gold can never match.

The value debate reached a fever pitch, and their differences were laid bare:

The founder argued Bitcoin’s scarcity is mathematically guaranteed—the 21 million cap will never change;

Schiff countered that new coins keep emerging on the market, and that Bitcoin is just "a game of musical chairs among speculators."

When it came to investment returns, the atmosphere heated up even more.

Schiff fired back: "Measured in gold, Bitcoin has dropped 40% in four years," adding that young people losing money in Bitcoin is "a good thing."

The founder replied with a smile: "I know quite a few early Bitcoin buyers who now live in the mansion district near my house."

Despite their opposing views, both maintained basic respect—the founder even wished Schiff’s tokenized gold project "success," and offered to help set up a future debate between him and Michael Saylor.

No winner emerged from this debate, but the significance was clear:

Gatekeepers of traditional assets are beginning to experiment with "tokenization";
Emerging digital assets are still striving for more mainstream acceptance.