Boris Johnson did not mince words in his Daily Mail column last Friday. He called Bitcoin a “giant Ponzi scheme” and told his readers to keep their money well away from it.
The piece opened with a story from his Oxfordshire village. A local man handed £500 to a pub acquaintance who promised to double it through Bitcoin investing.
“After three and a half years of muddle… he was down £20,000,” Johnson wrote, describing how the victim paid repeated fees trying to recover anything at all.
Johnson used the anecdote to build a broader argument. He said cryptocurrencies rely on a steady supply of new, credulous investors to sustain their value, and nothing more.
“I have always suspected from the outset that all cryptocurrencies were basically a Ponzi scheme,” he wrote, adding that the ecosystem collapses the moment public belief runs dry.
He compared Bitcoin unfavourably to gold, which he said he could see the intrinsic value of, and even to Pokémon cards, suggesting those would outperform Bitcoin in a decade.
The crypto industry responded within hours. Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Strategy and the most prominent corporate Bitcoin advocate alive, posted a sharp rebuttal on X.
“Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi requires a central operator promising returns and paying early investors with funds from later ones,” Saylor wrote.
“Bitcoin has no issuer, no promoter, and no guaranteed return — just an open, decentralized monetary network driven by code and market demand,” he added, addressing Johnson directly.
Community notes on X piled on supporting Saylor. Contributors pointed out that Bitcoin has no issuer, its code is entirely public, and participation is completely voluntary.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino and cypherpunk Adam Back also jumped in. Back’s response to Johnson was notably brief: “bozza! 🤣,” a dismissal that required no further elaboration.
This is not the first time Bitcoin has survived a Ponzi accusation from a high-profile sceptic. Economist Nouriel Roubini and European Central Bank executive Fabio Panetta have both made similar arguments over the years.
What makes Johnson’s version interesting is the timing. Bitcoin is trading near $71,000 while spot ETFs are pulling in billions monthly, making the Ponzi framing harder to sustain with a straight face.
The Ponzi label also fundamentally misidentifies the problem Johnson is actually describing. Crypto fraud, scams, and pub-acquaintance schemes are real — but those are crimes committed using Bitcoin, not evidence that Bitcoin itself is fraudulent.
