What $1,000 Would Be Worth at Every Major 'Bitcoin Is Dead' Call

Who Called It, and When?

BTC’s obituary is its own genre by now, and the arithmetic on it has finally been done. Here’s what $1,000 would be worth today had it been invested at each of the most prominent moments a public figure or institution announced that bitcoin was finished.

The dates line up with real, checkable moments:

• 2011, Forbes. Tim Worstall published “So, That’s the End of Bitcoin Then” on June 20, after the price on Mt. Gox collapsed from $17 to pennies in minutes. Claimed value today: $4,922,700.
• 2017, Jamie Dimon. The JPMorgan chief called bitcoin “a fraud,” adding it was “worse than tulip bulbs” and that “someone is going to get killed.” Claimed value today: $20,700.
• 2018, Warren Buffett. At Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting, Buffett called it “probably rat poison squared.” Charlie Munger, beside him, called crypto trading “just dementia.” Claimed value today: $8,800.
• 2019, Donald Trump. On July 11, the president posted that he was “not a fan of bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air.” Claimed value today: $7,300.
• 2022, European Central Bank. In a Nov. 30 blog post, ECB officials Ulrich Bindseil and Jürgen Schaff described the market as “an artificially induced last gasp before the road to irrelevance.” Claimed value today: $5,000.
• 2024, European Central Bank. The same institution returned, calling U.S. spot ETF approval “the naked emperor’s new clothes” and putting fair value at zero. Claimed value today: $1,700.