Bitcoin closed Friday at roughly $60,000. The price had shed 19% for the month. More than 50% evaporated from its October 2025 peak above $124,000. Another leg down. Another wave of hand-wringing.
Yet this time the selloff carries a sharper edge. Jeremy Grantham, the 87-year-old co-founder and long-term investment strategist at GMO, delivered a blunt verdict in a CNBC interview. He called cryptocurrency “a useless, speculative mechanism” that will “dwindle away” over decades. Not with a bang. But a whimper.
Grantham’s Long-Standing Skepticism Finds Fresh Ammunition
Grantham didn’t mince words. “It’s a useless, speculative asset without intrinsic value,” he said. The veteran investor, known for calling bubbles before they burst, pointed to Bitcoin’s failure to hold value in a strong economy. “It just halved, didn’t it, for no particular reason in a strong economy,” he observed, contrasting the drop with gold’s gains. He listed practical shortcomings. People don’t use it for serious trades. They don’t buy dinner with it or pay at the supermarket. “What it does is allows crooks to move money around without leaving a trace. Brilliant for that.”
Bitcoin pays no dividend. It represents no tangible asset. “There is nothing there,” Grantham added. He likened its structure to a chain letter. Value depends on finding someone willing to pay more later. Proof of work? “Proof of unnecessary work shouldn’t be worth a bucket of warm spit, and it will not be.”
And. He noted crypto has never faced a true bear market outside the long bull run since 2009. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger shared his doubts, he reminded viewers. The Slashdot summary of the remarks captured the market reaction. Comments ranged from dismissal to grudging acknowledgment that Bitcoin still correlates heavily with stocks and has yet to prove itself as an inflation hedge or safe haven amid geopolitical stress.
But the price action tells its own story. Bitcoin hit intraday lows near $58,000 in recent sessions, its weakest level since 2024. The drop extends a multi-month decline. Institutional players who once piled in now face pressure from competing opportunities. CoinDesk reported on NYDIG global head of research Greg Cipolaro’s analysis. No single cause explains the slide. Several headwinds converged.
Capital rotated toward artificial intelligence plays. Tech IPOs, including potential listings tied to companies holding Bitcoin, prompted some institutions to raise cash. Fears over quantum computing threatened to undermine cryptographic security. U.S. actions against Iranian crypto holdings under new Treasury leadership added regulatory chill. And then came the symbolic blow from Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy.
The firm, long Bitcoin’s most vocal corporate champion under Michael Saylor, sold 32 BTC for about $2.5 million in late May. First sale in nearly four years. It broke the “never sell” narrative. Strategy stock tumbled. Bitcoin slid below $70,000, then kept falling. The sale itself was economically small. Psychologically, it landed hard. Grayscale’s Zach Pandl later noted the leveraged model faced pressure, limiting further accumulation and raising volatility across the market.
Outflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs hit records. Over $2.8 billion in one streak. Mt. Gox distributions added selling pressure. Options expirations worth billions loomed, threatening more volatility. Yet on-chain metrics showed resilience. MVRV ratio hovered near 1.2. Less than half the supply sat in profit. Drawdowns stayed modest compared with past 70% to 90% crashes. Sam Callahan of OranjeBTC told Investing.com the investor base today is bigger, more liquid, and far more institutional. A rock thrown in a small pond creates a splash. In a large lake, ripples barely register.
Still. Doubts mount. Grantham’s critique resonates because it echoes classic value investing principles. No cash flows. No earnings. No physical backing. Scarcity alone, capped at 21 million coins, doesn’t create worth without demand. Bitcoin bulls counter with its fixed supply, decentralized network, and growing adoption as a treasury asset. Corporations and nations continue to accumulate. ETF inflows over time remain strongly positive even after recent outflows.
The current environment tests those arguments. Interest rates stayed higher longer than expected. AI captured investor imagination and capital. Geopolitical tensions failed to drive safe-haven flows into Bitcoin as hoped. Instead, risk assets broadly suffered. Gold held steady. Stocks showed relative strength. Bitcoin behaved like a high-beta tech play. Not digital gold.
So what now? Short-term traders eye support levels around $54,000 if bearish patterns play out, per recent technical commentary on X. Longer-term, the debate splits between those who see institutional maturity reducing volatility and those who view the asset as permanently tethered to sentiment and liquidity cycles.
Grantham remains unbowed. He expects the fade to happen slowly. Decades, perhaps. Bitcoin’s proponents insist each cycle strengthens the case. They point to its survival through multiple crashes. Its integration into traditional finance via ETFs and corporate balance sheets. Its role in cross-border payments where traditional rails falter.
Yet the strategist’s words linger. Useless. Speculative. No intrinsic value. In a market starved for yield and tangible returns, such labels carry weight. Bitcoin dropped again. The faithful watch closely. The skeptics say they told you so. The data will render the verdict over time. Not with drama. But with steady erosion. Or renewed conviction. One or the other.
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