Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson published a column in the Daily Mail calling Bitcoin a 'giant Ponzi scheme'. He cited a story about a retiree in an Oxfordshire village who lost roughly £20,000 when trying to withdraw funds, allegedly due to fraud. Johnson questioned why anyone should trust a system created by the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto with no institutional backing, asking: 'If they decrypt crypto, who do we hold accountable?' He argued that Bitcoin is just a string of numbers stored on computers, far inferior to gold or collectibles.
It is worth noting that Johnson's use of a retiree scam case as evidence against Bitcoin involves a logical fallacy. Fraudsters using Bitcoin to scam does not mean Bitcoin itself is a scam—just as phone scams do not make phones fraudulent. What deserves caution is fake Bitcoin investment fraud, not the Bitcoin protocol's architecture itself.
Eric Trump: 'Totally disagree'
Johnson's remarks triggered immediate backlash in the crypto community. Eric Trump, co-founder and chief strategist of American Bitcoin Corp, responded succinctly on X: 'Totally disagree.' He has repeatedly stated that Bitcoin is the greatest asset of this era and predicted BTC would break $1 million.
Saylor: No issuer, no guaranteed returns
Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Strategy and the largest corporate Bitcoin holder, dismantled Johnson's accusation by defining Ponzi schemes. He posted: 'Bitcoin has no issuer, no promoter, no guaranteed returns—it's just an open, decentralized monetary network driven by code and market demand.' Saylor pointed out that a Ponzi scheme relies on promises of high returns and new money to pay old investors, while Bitcoin is the opposite: a fixed supply of 21 million coins, no central issuer, fully open-source code, and voluntary participation by anyone.
Market-wise, Bitcoin broke above $71,000 this morning, trading near $71,345 at the time of writing, up roughly 0.5% in 24 hours.