1. What did Li Lu say about crypto?
Li Lu, the value investor and founder of Himalaya Capital who is often described as "China's Buffett," told an audience at Columbia Business School's 36th Annual Graham & Dodd event on October 5, 2026, that crypto assets will "disappear on their own." His reasoning was structural: digital assets, he argued, lack the enforcement power that only sovereign states possess, so they cannot perform the role of money.
The remark was brief, and it came as part of a wider conversation about investing rather than a prepared address on digital assets. Even so, it stands out because of who delivered it. Lu is one of the most closely watched long-term investors in the Columbia value-investing tradition, and his view gives skeptics of crypto a concise, principled argument they can repeat.
2. Why enforcement by governments sits at the centre of his argument
The heart of Lu's case is a point about authority, not about technology or price. Money, in the traditional sense, works because a government stands behind it. Courts enforce contracts denominated in a national currency, tax authorities accept it as payment, and legal systems treat it as the unit in which debts are settled. Lu's claim is that crypto has no equivalent backstop. In his framing, the missing piece is what he described as the enforcement mechanism of sovereign states.
Economists usually describe money as doing three jobs at once. It serves as a medium of exchange that people accept for goods and services, as a store of value that holds purchasing power over time, and as a unit of account in which prices are quoted. Lu's critique implies that crypto struggles with these jobs because nothing compels anyone to accept it and nothing guarantees how it will be treated in a dispute. Without a sovereign guarantee, he suggested, a digital token is a bet on continued collective belief rather than a claim that the law will honor.
That is a different objection from the ones most often heard in public debate. Many critics focus on volatility, on the energy used by some networks, or on the role of digital assets in fraud. Lu's objection is more fundamental. Even a perfectly stable and secure token, on this logic, would remain incomplete as money because it sits outside the legal order that gives national currencies their force.
The argument also explains why Lu treated the question as simple. If enforcement is the defining feature of money, then every other property of crypto, from fixed supply to open access, is secondary. A rule that nobody with legal authority will uphold is, in his view, not a durable foundation for settlement or for storing wealth over generations.
It helps to remember what a sovereign guarantee actually does in practice. When a business is paid in a national currency, the payment is final under law, disputes go to courts, and the state itself accepts the currency for taxes. Those features are rarely noticed because they work in the background, yet they are precisely what Lu's critique says crypto cannot replicate by technical design alone.
3. Why the phrase "on their own" matters
One detail in his forecast deserves attention: he did not call for a ban or for regulators to step in. His prediction was that crypto would fade away without outside pressure. The distinction matters because it presents the weakness as built into the asset itself. If the flaw is intrinsic, no prohibition is needed, because the system is expected to erode as the gap between what crypto promises and what it can deliver becomes clear over time.
It is also a statement about timing that Lu left open. He offered no date and no price level, and he did not describe the mechanism by which holders would eventually walk away. Predictions of this kind are hard to test, since a disappearance that takes decades cannot easily be separated from a slow decline that reverses. For readers, the useful takeaway is the logic of the argument rather than any schedule attached to it.
Lu also did not tie his comments to a market event. No notable price reaction has been linked to his remarks, which fits the nature of the occasion: it was a conversation about investing philosophy, not an announcement or a trade.
This reading also leaves room for coexistence in the short run. A weakness described as structural does not stop an asset from trading actively, attracting investors or rising in price for long stretches. Lu's claim concerns the end state, not the path, and it separates the question of whether people can profit from digital assets today from the question of whether they can serve as lasting money.
4. How crypto looks through a value-investing lens
Lu drew a clear line between crypto and the way he invests. He described digital assets as speculative and lacking the formal backing of an authority, in contrast to the businesses that value investors prefer. That approach concentrates on companies with real economic utility and durable competitive advantages, where an investor can reason about the cash a business is likely to generate and judge whether the market price is reasonable.
Value investing traces back to Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, the Columbia professors whose work gave the discipline its foundations and whose names the annual event carries. The core idea is to estimate what an asset is worth based on what it produces and to buy only when the price offers a margin of safety. A token that produces no cash flow and has no issuer obligated to pay holders does not fit easily into that framework, which helps explain why many followers of the school have stayed away from crypto.
For the same reason, Lu's comments are better read as a continuation of his philosophy than as a new position. His reputation was built on favoring real businesses over speculative bets, so skepticism toward an asset class with no underlying enterprise is consistent with how he has long approached markets.
The same logic underlies the broader distinction value investors draw between investing and speculating. An investor buys a claim on future productive output; a speculator buys something in the hope that another buyer will pay more later. By describing crypto as speculative and unbacked by authority, Lu placed it on the second side of that divide, which is why it falls outside the type of holdings he favors.
Durable competitive advantages, the second feature he emphasized, matter because they let a business keep earning returns for years. Value investors look for these traits, such as strong brands, cost leadership or entrenched customer relationships, because they make future cash flows easier to estimate. Nothing comparable exists in a token that has no operating business behind it.
5. Who is Li Lu?
Li Lu is a Columbia alumnus who holds a bachelor's degree, an MBA and a law degree from the university. In 1997 he founded Himalaya Capital, an investment firm closely associated with the disciplined, long-horizon style at the center of the Graham & Dodd tradition. Because of that record, and because the audience was a Columbia crowd steeped in value investing, his words carried particular weight in the room.
The nickname "China's Buffett" reflects the comparison commonly drawn between his patient, business-focused approach and that of Warren Buffett. Whatever one makes of the label, it signals why a short comment from Lu about crypto draws attention beyond the lecture hall: it comes from a figure whose career rests on the opposite end of the risk spectrum from speculative digital assets.
Columbia's Graham & Dodd event is an annual gathering devoted to the school's investing heritage, and the 36th edition on October 5 continued that tradition. The setting explains the emphasis of the evening on business fundamentals and long-term thinking, and it frames Lu's crypto comment as a response from within that intellectual lineage.
6. What does this mean for crypto and its critics?
Lu's remarks arrive amid continuing regulatory scrutiny of crypto markets around the world. The absence of clear legal frameworks remains a sticking point for institutions that weigh long-term stability and government backing before committing capital. His critique speaks directly to that concern, because it argues that backing from a sovereign, rather than merely a rulebook, is what separates money from a speculative instrument.
For supporters of digital assets, the comment is a reminder of the strongest version of the skeptical case: that legal enforcement, not code, is what gives money its authority. Advocates tend to answer that decentralized networks create their own form of enforcement through cryptography and consensus, and that adoption by institutions and individuals is itself a kind of validation. The two sides are largely arguing about different definitions of what makes an asset trustworthy.
For cautious investors, the remarks offer an articulate reason to remain on the sidelines. They do not change any rule, price or product, but they add the voice of a respected long-term allocator to a debate that is likely to continue as regulators, banks and asset managers define their place in the digital-asset economy.
The broader point for readers is that views like Lu's matter less as predictions than as tests of an asset class's claims. Each time a prominent investor sets out why digital assets cannot meet a particular standard, the industry is asked to show how it does, whether through regulation, institutional custody or legal recognition of token holders' rights.
7. What to watch next
Nothing in Lu's comments sets a deadline or points to a scheduled decision, so there is no specific date for readers to track. The more useful signals are developments that bear on his central premise: whether governments extend clearer legal recognition and enforcement to digital assets, and whether institutions that favor government-backed stability decide to accept them.
If frameworks emerge that give holders enforceable rights, the gap Lu identified would narrow. If they do not, his argument will remain a standing challenge that investors weigh against the growth of the market. Either way, the October 5 remarks are a clear statement of one of the most durable objections to crypto from one of the investing world's most recognized voices.