Peter Schiff says Bitcoin's jump above $80,000 after the SEC's tokenized-stock decision makes no sense, arguing tokenized shares now compete with Bitcoin for investor capital. The SEC granted a five-year exemption letting qualifying platforms trade tokenized US stocks that keep dividends and shareholder rights intact.
Bitcoin jumped more than 5% Friday to touch $80,587 after the SEC opened a regulatory route for tokenized US equities. It then held near $81,290 on Saturday, up roughly 1.6% over 24 hours, and longtime crypto critic Peter Schiff called the move backwards, arguing the news should weigh on Bitcoin rather than lift it.
According to CCN: "Yesterday's big Bitcoin rally following the SEC's tokenized stock announcement makes no sense," Schiff wrote, calling the development bearish for Bitcoin.
Why Schiff Says Tokenized Shares Outcompete Bitcoin
Schiff's argument centers on what investors actually receive for owning each asset. Bitcoin is a scarce digital asset, but it gives no claim on corporate earnings, cash flows or dividends. Tokenized stocks, however, can combine blockchain settlement and fractional ownership with the economic ownership of an underlying business.
Under the SEC's new framework, qualifying tokenized stocks must preserve the shareholder rights tied to the equivalent traditional shares, and synthetic products that merely track a price without conferring ownership are excluded. For Schiff, that makes tokenized equity a direct competitor for capital that might otherwise flow into Bitcoin.
SEC Grants a Five-Year Window for Tokenized Trading
The debate follows a real shift in US securities rules. The SEC granted qualifying platforms a five-year conditional "innovation exemption" to trade tokenized US stocks on blockchain-based infrastructure, with issuers able to object to tokenization of their shares. The market is still small: tokenized stocks are currently valued at about $3 billion, with less than $30 billion in monthly trading volume, according to Reuters Breakingviews.
Is Bitcoin Really Competing With Tokenized Stocks?
Schiff's premise — that Bitcoin and tokenized equities are substitutes — remains contested. Bitcoin has a fixed maximum supply of 21 million coins and no corporate issuer, so its store-of-value case rests on scarcity and independence from company performance rather than on dividends. A tokenized stock, by contrast, still depends on the underlying company and carries issuer, market and regulatory risk.
There is another reading of Friday's move: rather than threatening Bitcoin, the SEC decision could validate blockchain infrastructure for mainstream markets. Bitcoin ETF inflows also returned Thursday, with roughly $160 million entering the products after two days of outflows. Bitcoin rallied despite two headwinds earlier in the week: the Senate's failure to advance the CLARITY Act and the Federal Reserve's first rate hike in three years.
For Schiff, tokenization now sits alongside Bitcoin as a claim on digital investment capital — one backed by dividends and shareholder rights, the other by fixed supply alone.
Source: CCN
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