Billionaire value investor Jeremy Grantham has made it clear he sees no role for Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency in his portfolio-and doubts they’ll have much of a future at all.
Grantham, co-founder of the investment firm GMO and a veteran of multiple market cycles, laid out his stance during an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” He dismissed digital assets as little more than a speculative toy, arguing that the entire asset class lacks real economic function.
In his words, crypto is a “useless, speculative mechanism,” a place where people gamble on price moves rather than invest in productive assets. For someone who has spent decades analyzing bubbles and warning about overvalued markets, cryptocurrencies fall squarely into the “mania” category.
Looking ahead, Grantham doesn’t predict a dramatic collapse that wipes the market out overnight. Instead, he sees a slower, more anticlimactic ending.
“Years and years, decades and decades-it will dwindle away, I suspect,” he said about the long-term prospects for crypto. “Not with a bang, but with a whimper.”
One of his central criticisms is Bitcoin’s failure, in his view, to live up to its branding as “digital gold” or a reliable store of value. He pointed to Bitcoin’s sharp swings as proof that it cannot yet play that role in a serious portfolio.
Grantham highlighted Bitcoin’s steep drawdown from its recent peak: the cryptocurrency has fallen around 52% from its all‑time high of $126,080, set last October. That decline, he noted, has come despite relatively strong macroeconomic conditions and a period in which traditional safe-haven assets, particularly gold, have performed well.
While gold-a classic store-of-value asset-has pushed to new highs over the same timeframe, Bitcoin has struggled to hold on to its previous gains. For Grantham, that divergence is telling. If an asset marketed as an inflation hedge or alternative reserve asset cannot maintain value during benign conditions, he argues, it is hard to justify its place as a long-term holding.
From his perspective, a true store of value needs several qualities: relative price stability, deep and consistent demand, and a clear use case that extends beyond pure speculation. Gold, in his framework, qualifies thanks to centuries of history, broad institutional ownership, and status as collateral and a reserve asset. Cryptocurrencies, by contrast, still depend heavily on momentum, sentiment, and speculative flows.
Grantham’s comments fit neatly within his broader philosophy. He has built his reputation on identifying what he calls “superbubbles” in assets ranging from Japanese equities in the late 1980s to the U.S. housing market prior to 2008, and more recently in growth stocks and certain segments of the U.S. equity market. To him, crypto represents another expression of excess liquidity and speculative fervor rather than a technological revolution that will anchor future financial systems.
He also tends to place a high premium on fundamentals: cash flows, productive capacity, and real economic output. Traditional companies generate earnings; farmland yields crops; infrastructure provides services. Cryptocurrencies, in his framework, do not generate intrinsic cash flows. Without those, he believes their valuation rests almost entirely on what someone else is willing to pay in the future-a dynamic that, in his experience, rarely ends well over very long horizons.
At the same time, Grantham’s stance underscores a widening philosophical divide in markets. On one side are long-established value investors who see digital assets as a textbook bubble, and on the other are crypto advocates who argue that Bitcoin and other networks represent a new monetary and technological infrastructure.
Supporters of Bitcoin would counter many of Grantham’s points. They argue that volatility is normal for an emerging asset class with a relatively small market capitalization compared to global bonds, equities, or gold. In their view, Bitcoin’s fixed supply, censorship-resistance, and global accessibility give it characteristics that could become more valuable over time, particularly in countries with unstable fiat currencies or strict capital controls.
They also note that early-stage technologies often look “speculative” before their use cases mature. The internet, for example, went through a dramatic boom-and-bust cycle in the late 1990s and early 2000s before becoming an essential part of the global economy. By this logic, price bubbles and crashes do not, by themselves, disprove a technology’s underlying potential.
However, Grantham is focused less on technological possibility and more on investment practicality. For risk managers and long-term allocators, the key question is not just whether a technology is interesting, but whether the associated asset is likely to deliver durable, risk-adjusted returns. His answer, when it comes to Bitcoin and the wider crypto market, is a resounding no.
For investors trying to make sense of these conflicting views, Grantham’s critique raises several practical considerations:
– If Bitcoin is treated as “digital gold,” can it handle long periods of macro stress without catastrophic drawdowns?
– How much portfolio exposure-if any-makes sense when an asset can lose half its value in a relatively short period, even in a favorable macro environment?
– Is speculative demand enough to sustain value over decades, or must there be clear, non-speculative use cases and persistent real-world demand?
Grantham clearly believes the demand side will erode over time. In his scenario, interest in crypto doesn’t collapse overnight; instead, enthusiasm gradually fades as the asset class fails to deliver on its biggest promises of revolutionizing money, replacing traditional stores of value, or consistently outperforming other risk assets over multiple cycles.
That “whimper” scenario implies a long, grinding period of underperformance, waning excitement, and reduced relevance-a very different story from the abrupt, spectacular crashes that often dominate headlines. For long-term skeptics like Grantham, that kind of slow fade is more consistent with how many past fads and speculative crazes have ended.
On the other hand, crypto markets have repeatedly recovered from past downturns, and a new generation of investors continues to enter the space. Whether Grantham’s prediction of a decades-long decline plays out, or whether Bitcoin and its peers entrench themselves further into the financial system, remains an open question.
What his comments do make clear is that, at least for now, some of the most seasoned voices in traditional finance remain unconvinced. For investors, that tension-between established skepticism and ongoing adoption-will likely continue to define the crypto debate for years to come.