Jeremy Grantham Slams Bitcoin: 'It Will Dwindle Away Over Decades'

Veteran British billionaire investor and GMO co-founder Jeremy Grantham has delivered one of his most pointed attacks on Bitcoin to date, dismissing the world's leading cryptocurrency as a purely speculative instrument with no real-world value — and predicting its eventual, quiet demise.

Appearing on CNBC's Squawk Box, Grantham pulled no punches in expressing his views on BTC. 'I think it's a useless, speculative mechanism,' he told the panel, adding that he ultimately expects the asset to trend toward zero. Yet his forecast wasn't one of sudden collapse. Rather, Grantham painted a picture of slow, grinding irrelevance stretching over generations.

'Over years and years, decades and decades, it will dwindle away, I suspect — not with a bang, but a whimper,' the billionaire explained, borrowing a phrase from T.S. Eliot to describe what he sees as Bitcoin's inevitable trajectory.

Grantham flatly rejected the widely held narrative that Bitcoin functions as a reliable store of value or inflation hedge. Pointing to a recent sharp price drop that occurred despite a relatively strong macroeconomic backdrop, he argued that the asset is simply too volatile and unpredictable to serve that purpose. 'It's not a stable form of value,' he stated. 'It just halved for no particular reason in a strong economy, so you can't depend on it in that way.' He also noted that gold posted solid gains over the same period, contrasting the two assets as a point of emphasis.

Beyond price volatility, Grantham challenged the notion that Bitcoin serves any meaningful function within the real economy. He questioned what practical role the token actually plays in everyday commerce. 'People don't use it to make serious trades. They don't use it to buy their dinner and pay at the supermarket. So what the hell does it do?' he asked — before offering his own sardonic answer: 'What it does is allows crooks to move money around without leaving a trace. Brilliant.'

The seasoned investor also directed criticism at Bitcoin's underlying architecture. Specifically, he took aim at the proof-of-work consensus mechanism, which requires massive amounts of computational energy to validate transactions and secure the network. 'Proof of unnecessary work shouldn't be worth a bucket of warm spit, and it will not be,' Grantham declared bluntly.

At the heart of Grantham's critique is the idea that Bitcoin is entirely detached from any tangible financial fundamentals. Unlike equities that pay dividends or commodities that have physical form and industrial use, Bitcoin, in his view, offers nothing concrete. 'It pays no dividend. It doesn't represent an asset you can put your fingers on. There is nothing there, there,' he said. 'It is just an idea that it will go up in price. If you trust me, it will go up in price. This is completely faith-based.'

Grantham, who built his reputation as one of the world's foremost bubble-spotters over a career spanning decades, has long been skeptical of speculative manias in financial markets. His latest comments on Bitcoin fit squarely within that broader worldview — and are sure to reignite debate between crypto advocates and traditional finance veterans over the long-term viability of digital assets.