Legendary British billionaire investor Jeremy Grantham has predicted that Bitcoin will inevitably fade into irrelevance.
During his most recent appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box, the GMO co-founder and veteran bubble-spotter believes that BTC is useless. “I think it’s a useless, speculative mechanism,” he told the CNBC panel, predicting that the asset is ultimately heading to zero.
‘Not with a bang, but a whimper’
According to the billionaire, there will not be a catastrophic implosion. Instead, as Grantham believes, Bitcoin will suffer a slow bleed.
“Over years and years, decades and decades, it will dwindle away, I suspect – not with a bang, but a whimper,” Grantham explained.
He does not buy the narrative that Bitcoin serves as a reliable hedge or store of wealth. “It’s not a stable form of value,” Grantham argued. “It just halved for no particular reason in a strong economy, so you can’t depend on it in that way.”
The billionaire has also pointed out that gold made a strong gain over the same time.
No utility?
Graham has criticized the token’s inability to function as an actual currency in the real economy.
“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?” Grantham asked. He quickly answered his own rhetorical question: “What it does is allows crooks to move money around without leaving a trace. Brilliant.”
He also took aim at the energy-intensive “proof-of-work” consensus model that secures the Bitcoin network. “Proof of unnecessary work shouldn’t be worth a bucket of warm spit, and it will not be,” he declared.
For Grantham, the entire ecosystem is built on a foundation of pure speculation rather than tangible financial fundamentals. “It pays no dividend. It doesn’t represent an asset you can put your fingers on. There is nothing there, there,” he emphasized. “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.”
