Legendary investor Jeremy Grantham — co-founder of asset management firm GMO and one of Wall Street’s most prominent bubble watchers — came to Bitcoin again on Friday, calling the asset a “useless speculative mechanism” destined for a slow decline into irrelevance.
He speaks on CNBC Squawk boxBitcoin “will taper off, I think — not with a bang, but with a whimper,” Grantham predicted. he He said He has never owned Bitcoin and believes it will fall to zero, not through a sudden crash but through the gradual erosion of interest over years and decades.
“All Bitcoin does is allow fraudsters to move money,” he said.
Grantham pointed to Bitcoin’s instability as evidence against its status as a store of value. He noted that the coin “halved for no particular reason in a strong economy,” a criticism with new teeth given where Bitcoin stands today.
He added that gold achieved strong gains during the same period.
Maybe Grantham was right, the sell-off was intense. BTC has reached an all-time high close $126,000 in October 2025. Since then, the digital asset has lost more than 50% of its value. As of Friday, Bitcoin was trading in the $60,000 range, a test of what analysts said Consider the critical support area If it breaks, it could open the way to $40,000.
Bitcoin It fell about $62,000 In mid-June, hawkish signals from the Federal Reserve rattled risk markets. Escalating geopolitical tensions between the US and Iran have sent oil prices soaring and reignited inflation fears, prompting Fed officials to abandon any talk of interest rate cuts – with some floating about the possibility of a rate hike. US BTC ETFs recorded four consecutive days of net outflows totaling approximately $113.8 million.
Bitcoin’s attempt to reclaim the high ground directly reached its 200-day moving average, which served as strong resistance and led to a roughly 30% drop from that ceiling. Current withdrawal It is among the fifth worst coins in Bitcoin history – An area that tests the resolve of its holders in the long term. However, some institutional buyers, They address the decline As an entry point, Coinbase reported that major institutions stepped in to buy the crash.
Another billionaire is betting big on Bitcoin
On the other hand, Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas Plego It was placed 70% of his investment portfolio is in Bitcoin – up from just 10% in 2020 – and he even convinced his wife to mortgage their house to buy more.
The Grupo Salinas founder traces his skepticism about fiat currency to family dinner table conversations about Nixon’s ending of the gold standard, and sees bitcoin as superior to both cash and gold because it is non-seizable and limitless.
His conviction has weathered a $150 million loan scam, regulatory resistance to his plans to make Banco Azteca the first bank to accept Bitcoin in Mexico, and multiple market cycles.
He recently pointed to a decade of London property prices as evidence for his thesis — a house that cost 4,000 BTC in 2016 now costs less than 30 BTC — and is urging ordinary investors to shift their home equity into Bitcoin exposure, calling it “an asymmetric bet on the upside.”
