Key Takeaways
- Peter Schiff leads the obituary count with 26 calls, ahead of Warren Buffett’s eight.
- The European Central Bank has declared bitcoin finished twice, in 2022 and again in 2024.
- BTC is trading near $86,500 on Sept. 23, roughly 30% below its $126,080 record.
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.
The tally comes from Bitcoin Deaths, a platform that has logged 478 declarations since 2010, 24 of them this month alone. The first landed in December 2010, when a single bitcoin was worth $0.11 and since then Peter Schiff has filed 26 of them, economist Steve Hanke 10, and Buffett eight.
Who Changed Their Mind?
Several of the aforementioned names did not hold their line. For instance, Dimon said he regretted the fraud remark within four months, with JPMorgan not only having built out substantial blockchain infrastructure since then but also owning sizable bitcoin. Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett’s own vehicle, shifted its stance on crypto in 2025 while Trump himself ran and won on a pro-crypto platform.
The Genre Is Still Running
None of this has retired the format because as recently as last week, prominent angel investor Jason Calacanis called bitcoin a bouncing “dead cat” (just as its price cleared $81,000). The comment drew replies from Michael Saylor and Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood.
Bitcoin’s price currently sits near $86,500, up 14% over seven days and about 30% below its $126,080 record. Spot funds just logged their largest 2026 inflow day at $999 million as well.
