Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff and MicroStrategy's Michael Saylor faced off in a heated Twitter spat over their views on cryptocurrencies

• Peter Schiff and Michael Saylor slammed each other's bitcoin views on Monday.
• "I think everything you say to promote bitcoin is nonsense," Schiff said in a tweet to Saylor.
• The global strategist's son moved 100% of his portfolio into bitcoin earlier this year.

"Gold bug" Peter Schiff and MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor on Monday engaged in a heated online argument over their views on cryptocurrencies.

Schiff, Euro Pacific Capital's chief economist and global strategist, slammed Saylor's "asinine advice" to hold bitcoin as an inflationary hedge as the digital asset seems to have lost its momentum recently.

He has previously trashed bitcoin as useless.

"CEO's who followed @michael_saylor's asinine advice to plug their balance sheets into #Bitcoin to hedge against an expected annual #inflation rate of 2% are now down as much as 34% on their 'hedge' in one month," Schiff said in a tweet. "That's 17 years of expected inflation losses. Time to pull the plug!"

Bitcoin was last trading around $45,000 on Tuesday, and is up 45% so far this year. It fell almost 13% after billionaire Elon Musk shocked the crypto market by suspending bitcoin payments for Tesla, citing concerns over the energy consumption of the mining process.

Saylor struck back at Schiff with a screenshot of gold's investment gains compared to bitcoin, showing that the precious metal would have provided returns 77% below those of bitcoin over the past 12 months.

Schiff believes gold is a far more reliable asset than cryptocurrencies. He asked Saylor, whose MicroStrategy company owns billions in bitcoin, why they couldn't debate the matter, instead of turning down opportunities to do so.

"It's not clear what we would debate," Saylor tweeted. "Your position appears to be 'Buy some gold, or silver, or gold stocks, or government bonds, or corporate bonds, or dividend stocks, or value stocks, or emerging market stocks, or small company stocks, or anything really - just not too much.'"

Schiff is best known for accurately predicting the 2008 financial crisis, and his forecasts for the economy are closely watched. After Elon Musk's tweets on bitcoin seemed to have an effect on its price, he called investing in the asset a gamble. But his son, Peter Schiff, moved 100% of his portfolio into the digital asset earlier this year.

Schiff criticized Saylor's promotion of the cryptocurrency, and said: "I think everything you say to promote bitcoin is nonsense. That's the debate."

Saylor hit back, saying there was no point in debating a critic who "offers nothing but fear, uncertainty, doubt, & vitriol."

"The world needs strong money, and since by your own admission you have no faith in #gold, equity, bonds, & fiat, #Bitcoin wins by default," he added.

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After the sell-off over the last week, the most recent price action for bitcoin shows signs of stabilization around the $45,000 price level, according to Simon Peters, cryptoasset analyst at multi-asset investment platform eToro.

"This means there is a possibility of buyers now stepping in to push prices up and, as we have seen before, investors waiting on the side lines are already using the sell-off we have seen to invest in cryptoassets, taking advantage of the volatility," he said.