Boris Johnson came out swinging. The former UK Prime Minister published a Daily Mail op-ed calling Bitcoin a “giant Ponzi scheme,” anchoring his entire argument on a neighbor’s financial disaster and a comparison to Pokémon cards.

Johnson described a friend who put in £500 after a pub conversation with someone who promised to double his money through Bitcoin. Three and a half years of fees later, the man had lost £20,000. Johnson wrote that the friend was struggling to pay bills and was not alone in the neighborhood.

Saylor and Rochard Push Back Hard

As BSCNews reported on X, Johnson’s op-ed sparked an immediate reaction from the crypto industry. According to BSCNews, on X, Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor rejected the Ponzi label outright, while Pierre Rochard, CEO of The Bitcoin Bond Company, turned the accusation back on the British government itself.

Saylor’s response drew a clear structural distinction.

“Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi requires a central operator promising returns and paying early investors with funds from later ones. Bitcoin has no issuer, no promoter, and no guaranteed return, just an open, decentralized monetary network driven by code and market demand.”

Rochard went further. According to BSCNews, on X, Rochard said the UK itself operates as a “giant Ponzi scheme” financed entirely by debt, flipping Johnson’s framing back at the British state.

Johnson’s Pokémon Card Comparison

Johnson’s column leaned on historical currency theory. He argued that money’s value historically comes from the centralized authority backing it, citing the Roman Empire and its low inflation as an example of state-backed monetary trust.

Bitcoin, in his view, is only “a string of numbers stored in a series of computers.” No army backs it. No government guarantees it. No institution stands behind it.

He concluded that within ten years, an investment in Pokémon cards would likely outperform Bitcoin. The cards, he argued, at least carry recognizable generational appeal and decades of trading history. Gold, by the same logic, has tangible and widely accepted worth. Bitcoin, Johnson said, depends entirely on confidence and a constant stream of new buyers willing to pay more.

That confidence, he wrote, is already cracking. He said he is hearing too many stories of shattered belief to remain silent.

Eric Trump, BitMEX Research Also Respond

The backlash was not limited to Saylor and Rochard. Eric Trump publicly said he does not agree with Johnson’s remarks on Bitcoin. BitMEX Research responded on X with three words when asked about Bitcoin’s leadership structure: “nobody is in charge.”

Community notes were added to Johnson’s post on X, pointing out that Ponzi schemes typically promise artificially high returns with near-zero stated risk. That structural feature, the notes argued, does not apply to Bitcoin’s publicly transparent and open-source design.

Johnson, for his part, left room for being wrong. He acknowledged that Bitcoin could keep climbing if confidence holds. Still, he said the flood of scam stories he keeps encountering suggests that confidence is not holding for ordinary people.