Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Bitcoin (BTC) a "giant Ponzi scheme" in a Daily Mail column published Friday, drawing swift pushback from Strategy chairman Michael Saylor, Tether (USDT) CEO Paolo Ardoino, and Blockstream CEO Adam Back.
The column arrived the same week the Bitcoin network mined its 20 millionth coin, a milestone that drew renewed attention to the asset's hard-coded 21 million supply cap.
Johnson, who led the U.K. from 2019 to 2022, argued that Bitcoin depends on a constant flow of new, often inexperienced buyers rather than any intrinsic value.
"Like all such schemes, they depend on a constant supply of new and credulous investors," he wrote.
What Happened
Johnson grounded his argument in a personal anecdote. He described an Oxfordshire villager who handed £500 (~$661) to a pub acquaintance promising to double the sum through Bitcoin.
The man spent three and a half years trying to recover his funds, ultimately losing roughly £20,000 (~$26,450) and left struggling to pay bills, according to Johnson.
"If people lose faith in Bitcoin, it collapses," Johnson wrote, adding that he feared more elderly investors would suffer similar losses as disillusion spread.
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What They Said
Saylor rejected the characterization on X, arguing Bitcoin does not meet the structural definition of a Ponzi. "A Ponzi requires a central operator promising returns and paying early investors with funds from later ones," he said. "Bitcoin has no issuer, no promoter, and no guaranteed return - just an open, decentralized monetary network driven by code and market demand."
X's community notes feature added context to Johnson's post, pointing out that Ponzi schemes promise artificially high returns with little risk, while Bitcoin's value is set by the free market alone.
Ardoino drew attention to those notes; Back addressed Johnson by his political nickname: "Bozza." BitMEX Research answered Johnson's implicit question about Bitcoin's chain of command in three words: "Nobody is in charge."
Why It Matters
The Ponzi comparison has circulated for years. Economist Nouriel Roubini has called cryptocurrency a "real-bubble Ponzi scheme," and European Central Bank Executive Board member Fabio Panetta in 2022 compared the digital asset market to a "house of cards."
Bitcoin supporters consistently counter that the absence of a central operator disqualifies the asset from the Ponzi definition by construction.
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