During an event at Binance Blockchain Week in Dubai, gold advocate Peter Schiff confronted Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao regarding the authenticity of a gold bar. Schiff contended that tokenized gold served as a superior store of value compared to Bitcoin.

The discussion focused on which asset, tokenized gold or Bitcoin, holds more value based on factors like divisibility, portability, verifiability, durability, and supply constraints.

CZ asserted that Bitcoin has the advantage due to its verifiability through a public ledger. He presented Schiff with a gold bar, querying whether it was indeed genuine: “It says Kyrgyzstan, 1,000 grams, fine gold, 999.9, and a serial number. Is it real gold?”

“I don’t know,” Schiff replied, prompting laughter from the audience. CZ previously criticized tokenized gold, indicating trust in the issuer is required, which set the stage for this engaging exchange.

The ongoing debate contrasts views from advocates of gold, including Schiff, who argue that gold tokenization remedies drawbacks of physical gold with applications in decentralized finance.

In contrast, Bitcoin proponents suggest that real-world asset (RWA) tokenization does not resolve issues connected to the physical gold tied to digital tokens, such as centralization and high auditing costs.

Related: Peter Schiff calls Strategy’s model ‘fraud’

Fire Assaying Remains the Industry Standard for Gold Verification

Gold verification commonly employs methods like X-Ray Fluorescent Spectroscopy and others as outlined by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA). However, these methods don’t provide absolute certainty. Only fire assaying guarantees complete verification, but it is a destructive process.

The LBMA notes that currently, there’s no effective non-destructive test for complete verification of gold.

Watch the Debate Here

[Source: Binance]