Grantham Warns Bitcoin Will ‘Dwindle Away’ With BTC Down 50% From Peak

Bitcoin News

Veteran investor Jeremy Grantham renewed his attack on Bitcoin (BTC) on Friday, telling CNBC’s Squawk Box that the asset will “dwindle away, I suspect — not with a bang, but a whimper.” The GMO co-founder, one of Wall Street’s best-known bubble-spotters, called Bitcoin a “useless, speculative mechanism” headed for a slow slide into irrelevance over years and decades rather than a single crash. Grantham said he has never owned the coin and expects it to reach zero. His comments land as Bitcoin trades near $60,000, more than 50% below its record, sharpening a critique that has dogged the market for months.

Grantham’s core argument targeted Bitcoin’s claim to be a store of value. The asset “halved for no particular reason in a strong economy,” he said, arguing it cannot be trusted to hold worth when it sheds half its value without an obvious catalyst. He contrasted that volatility with gold, which has posted steady gains over the same stretch. Grantham also dismissed Bitcoin as a working payment rail, noting that people do not use it to buy dinner or pay at the supermarket. His sharpest line cast the network as a tool for illicit finance: “All Bitcoin does is allow fraudsters to move money around.”

The selloff gives those bearish remarks fresh weight. Bitcoin printed an all-time high near $126,000 in October 2025 before reversing hard, and on Friday it changed hands in the $60,000 range — a drawdown of more than 50% from the peak. Traders are now watching what many regard as a make-or-break support zone; a clean break, analysts highlight, could open a path into the $40,000s. The move has reset positioning across the market and dragged sentiment to its weakest levels of the cycle, with the descent ranking among the steepest Bitcoin has recorded in its history.

Macro pressure accelerated the slide. Bitcoin fell toward $62,000 in mid-June after hawkish signals from the Federal Reserve rattled risk assets, while rising U.S.–Iran tensions pushed oil prices higher and reignited inflation fears. Those crosscurrents prompted Fed officials to drop talk of rate cuts, with some even floating the prospect of hikes — a backdrop that historically weighs on speculative assets. Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds reflected the caution: U.S. products logged four consecutive sessions of net outflows totaling roughly $113.8 million, a stretch of redemptions that underscores how quickly institutional appetite can cool when the rate outlook turns against risk.

Technically, the rebound attempt stalled at a closely tracked ceiling. Bitcoin’s push to reclaim higher ground ran directly into its 200-day moving average, the long-term trend gauge that smooths price over roughly seven months, and the rejection there triggered a decline of about 30% from that level. The resulting drawdown ranks among the fifth worst in Bitcoin’s history, a depth that tests the conviction of long-term holders. Not everyone is selling, however. On-chain and desk data point to selective accumulation, with reports that major institutions have stepped in to buy the crash, treating the drop as an entry rather than an exit.

One high-profile buyer is leaning in further. Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego, founder of Grupo Salinas, has lifted Bitcoin to roughly 70% of his investment portfolio, up from about 10% in 2020, and says he convinced his wife to mortgage their home to buy more. Salinas traces his distrust of fiat currency to childhood dinner-table debates about President Nixon ending the gold standard, and he frames Bitcoin as superior to both cash and gold. His aggressive allocation offers a direct counterweight to Grantham’s thesis, illustrating the widening gulf between Bitcoin’s most committed bulls and its most entrenched skeptics.

Our reading of COINOTAG’s proprietary 42-indicator composite S/R scoring engine frames the battle precisely. As of the latest read, with spot at $59,971, the engine rates the $58,115 support at 79/100 (strong), driven by the confluence of Fibonacci 0.000, the prior-day low and the Donchian lower band, while the $60,950 resistance also scores 79/100 on R1, Fibo 0.114 and HVN clustering. RSI at 30.34 sits at the edge of oversold and MACD reads bearish, confirming the downtrend. Derivatives data show a positive 0.0052% funding rate, $11.78 billion open interest and a 2.17 long/short ratio — crowded longs into a 13/100 Extreme Fear print. A daily close below $58,115 invalidates the bullish case and exposes $51,387.