Billionaire investor Jeremy Grantham has made his stance on cryptocurrency crystal clear: he wants nothing to do with it. The co-founder of investment firm GMO appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Friday, where he called crypto a "useless, speculative mechanism" and predicted its eventual demise.
"Years and years, decades and decades—it will dwindle away, I suspect," Grantham said of crypto's future. "Not with a bang, but with a whimper."
Grantham pointed to Bitcoin's recent 52% decline from its all-time high of $126,080 set last October, despite strong economic conditions. In contrast, gold—a traditional store of value—has notched sizable gains during the same period, reaching a new all-time high above $5,500 per ounce earlier this year before pulling back.
"You can’t depend on it in that way," he said of Bitcoin as a store of value. "People don’t use it to make serious trades, they don’t use it to buy their dinner and pay at the supermarket."
Instead, Grantham argued that Bitcoin's primary use case is for illicit activity, saying it "allows crooks to move money around without leaving a trace," adding that it's "brilliant at that."
However, Grantham did concede that the underlying blockchain technology could play a transformative role in the future, but made clear his comments were specifically about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin has fallen 17% in the last month, recently trading at $60,529.
Grantham's criticism echoes that of fellow billionaire Mark Cuban, who last month said he sold most of his Bitcoin, noting that it has underperformed gold and is "not the hedge I expected it to be."
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