Billionaire Investor Jeremy Grantham Calls Bitcoin a Useless, Speculative Asset. Here's Why He's Wrong.

Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) is 48% below its October 2025 all-time high of $126,080, and the drawdown has, quite predictably, been rocket fuel for crypto skeptics. One critic, Jeremy Grantham, the billionaire co-founder of GMO who also predicted the 2008 financial crisis, went on CNBC's Squawk Box in late June to declare the coin a "useless, speculative" asset that will "dwindle away, I suspect, not with a bang, but a whimper" over the course of the coming decades.

He is in good company with that position. Warren Buffett called Bitcoin "rat poison squared," and Charlie Munger, Buffett's investing partner, held similar views. Yet these illustrious investors are all probably wrong on multiple counts. Here's why.

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One core claim doesn't hold up

There's one claim in particular among Grantham's numerous criticisms of Bitcoin that shows his understanding of the asset is meaningfully incomplete.

"All Bitcoin does is allow fraudsters to move money around," Grantham told CNBC. At one point, that might have been true, but it isn't anymore.

Chainalysis, the leading blockchain analytics company, reported in its 2026 Crypto Crime Report that stablecoins now account for 84% of illicit on-chain volume, as criminals migrate away from Bitcoin's permanent and publicly searchable ledger toward other assets.

This directly refutes Grantham's claim. The traceability of Bitcoin's ledger is likely why criminals have moved on.

Now, let's turn to Grantham's more substantive attacks.

The more serious critique doesn't work either

Grantham's stronger point is that Bitcoin's price collapsed after October 2025 despite a strong stock market. That's true, but owning Bitcoin was never a bet on stability.

Its fundamental value rests on two pillars: a hard-capped supply of 21 million BTC that will ever exist, and the regular halving of the mining reward. Over time, when those pillars do their job, they create a situation in which net demand from long-term buyers has historically outpaced new supply from miners and forced sellers.

Those pillars do not guarantee that Bitcoin will rise or fall at any given moment, or that it will maintain any specific price level. They only work to bias the asset's price toward the upside over the long run, and when it's denominated in fiat currencies, which are subject to inflation.

So Grantham's questioning of the coin's volatile price is fair, but it misses the larger points: Bitcoin can't be printed, and it can't be produced faster than it is right now -- and both of those statements will remain true. The social proof of its value isn't visible in the coin's tokenomics or other fundamentals, but as long as there's at least some population willing to buy it, its supply schedule should take care of the price.

Bitcoin will thus most likely absorb Grantham's critiques indefinitely while its price grinds higher.

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