Bitcoin Has Been Declared Dead 471 Times. Here's What Happened Every Time.

Many high-profile people, including quite a few smart ones, have been publicly declaring that Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) is dead or doomed for as long as the coin has existed. As of this writing, the count as tracked by BitcoinDeaths, a data aggregator, stands at 471 separate public obituaries, issued by everyone from Nobel laureates to bank chief executives, hedge fund managers, prime ministers, cable news pundits, and at least one central banker. The legendary investor Warren Buffett, for his part, is responsible for at least eight of those declarations.

Today, Bitcoin is priced at about $71,000, down by about 44% from the all-time high of about $126,000 in October, so the skeptics are predictably emboldened at the moment. But the coin's habit of continuing to live when people are saying that it's dead suggests that writing this asset off has been one of the more expensive mistakes in financial history. Let's look at what history says on this topic.

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The critics are worth taking seriously

First, let's commit to not casually dismissing all the predictions of Bitcoin's death on the basis of its continuing existence. Bearish stances can take time to play out, and if you're a serious investor, you need to get a handle on what the bears are saying about your investments to make sure that your analysis didn't miss anything important. And many of this asset's biggest detractors are investors whose opinions tend to be carefully crafted, so their words have weight.

For example, the economist and investment advisor Peter Schiff has made 22 separate declarations that Bitcoin is dead, worthless, or doomed, including most recently in mid-February. He has been making this argument for more than a decade now; on Dec. 10, 2017, when the coin was priced at nearly $17,000, he said it had no value. It's up 334% since then.

Another longtime critic, Warren Buffett, delivered his most memorable call at the 2018 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, where he called Bitcoin "probably rat poison squared." The coin's price was about $9,700 that week. If you had bought $500 of it at that point, you would now have more than $3,750 after gaining 653% on your investment. And that result is, at least so far, broadly consistent with what has happened all of the other times people have declared Bitcoin dead.

The pace of new obituaries being published reveals a telling rhythm: Assertions of Bitcoin's death spike when prices crash. 2017 produced 93 obituaries and 2018 added 74, whereas 2025 logged 34, and 2026 already has 17 on the books, suggesting that the current pullback is activating a familiar reflex. Historically, in calmer or bullish stretches, the count drops to single digits.

What the gravediggers keep missing

The main arguments proposed by detractors like Schiff and Buffett are that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, and that its price is determined solely by investor sentiment, which is inherently fickle. So what are they getting wrong?

One key thing is that they don't acknowledge that the asset has continuously gained legitimacy as well as integration with the traditional financial system over time.

In that vein, spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have experienced about $56 billion in net capital inflows since their approval in early 2024. That's simply not the profile of an asset on its deathbed. The large scale of the inflows fits better with the story that financial institutions are accumulating the coin so that they can benefit from its scarcity and its potential as a digital store of value.

Another factor that critics tend to omit is that Bitcoin's scarcity mechanisms ensure that it doesn't need an enormous amount of demand for its price to continue increasing over the long term. The trick is that its newly produced supply decreases by 50% every four years or so as a result of its halving, so buyers are always incentivized to buy sooner rather than later, when there will be even fewer coins arriving on the market. Thus, it doesn't take too many people to believe that Bitcoin has value for it to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But, as long as it's misunderstood, Bitcoin will doubtlessly be declared dead again. For what it's worth, I find that those declarations tend to mark very favorable times to buy it for the purpose of holding for the long run.

Alex Carchidi has positions in Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.