Is Grant Cardone a degenerate gambler when it comes to Bitcoin?
AI-generated image by Jeffrey Augustine. 

As I show in this article, Grant Cardone is down an estimated $126 million on Bitcoin — and the losses fall not on Cardone alone but on the everyday investors he recruited into his Cardone Capital hybrid funds, which invest in both multifamily real estate and Bitcoin. The figure is based on my analysis of the funds’ published Bitcoin purchases, calculated at Bitcoin’s price of $62,875 as of midday June 5, 2026. It does not include any Bitcoin Cardone may hold personally, for which no data is available to me.

Despite Bitcoin’s crash on June 4, 2026, Cardone doubled down and bought more Bitcoin on the same day as the crash:

We do not see Grant Cardone’s doubling-down on Bitcoin as conviction. We see it as the act of a degenerate gambler who has already had to sell his company jet to stay in the game:

What will Cardone sell next to stay in the Bitcoin game? 

A gambler down $126 million who has to sell his possessions to stay in the game is not demonstrating conviction; he is staying in the game because walking away means admitting the loss is real — to himself, and to the retail investors whose money is on the table with his.

Every Bitcoin Cardone buys “at Sixty Two” joins a stack on which every prior tranche, from $108,000 down to $73,000, is already underwater as we show in this article. 

On February 5, 2026, we documented Grant Cardone’s $280 million Bitcoin position imploding as the cryptocurrency broke below $70,000.[1]

We wrote then that Cardone’s crypto play was not financial innovation — it was the move of a highly leveraged syndicator whose traditional investor pipeline had collapsed, whose balloon payments were arriving on schedule, and whose Bitcoin stack functioned as a liquidity bridge rather than a hedge.[2]

Four months later, Bitcoin is lower, the losses are larger, and Grant Cardone’s response has been to buy more — with investor money. This is an update on where the numbers now stand.

The Crash Resumes

Bitcoin capped a dismal week on Friday, June 5, 2026, wallowing more than 50% below its October 2025 all-time high near $126,000. The week-long sell-off accelerated after a stronger-than-expected May jobs report sent Treasury yields higher and pressured risk assets across the board.[3]

As of June 5, Bitcoin trades near $62,875 — down roughly 14% on the week and 20% since mid-May. Spot Bitcoin ETFs have bled $4.4 billion across a record thirteen consecutive days of outflows. The technical structure is uniformly bearish: price sits below the 20-day, 50-day, and 100-day moving averages, and every support level broken in the past two weeks has flipped into overhead resistance.[4]

The week’s bearish catalysts included MicroStrategy’s first disclosed Bitcoin sale, more than $3.2 billion in spot ETF outflows, and a large Mt. Gox wallet transfer.[5]

When Bitcoin broke below $64,000 on June 3, more than $1.1 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated within twenty-four hours.[6]

In February, we reported Stifel Financial’s warning that this cycle’s trendline of major crash lows points to a potential bottom of $38,000.[7]

Four months later, nothing in the price action has invalidated that scenario. Bitcoin has fallen from $70,000 to $62,875 — one-third of the remaining distance to Stifel’s number.

Cardone’s Response: Buy More, Predict Higher

A prudent fiduciary facing a 40% drawdown on a speculative asset purchased with retail investor capital might pause, hedge, or disclose. Grant Cardone did the opposite — on a stage.

At the Consensus Miami 2026 conference in early May, Cardone announced, “We just simply added another $100 million of bitcoin,” describing a transaction that fused the new BTC with a $235 million multifamily property inside a single LLC. He told the audience the hybrid model would deliver returns between 22% and 32%, boasted that traditional REITs are structurally barred from holding Bitcoin on their balance sheets, and — most remarkably — volunteered that 80% of the investors in the fund owned no Bitcoin whatsoever before he put it in their portfolios.[8]

Cardone paired the new purchase with a year-end price prediction of exactly $189,425. Pressed on why he would not give a range like other forecasters, he replied, “It’s never gonna land on $189 even. Impossible.”[9]

This is not analysis. This is the Nostradamus act we have documented for years. For Cardone to be Nostradamus in predicting BTC at $189,425  requires Bitcoin to triple in seven months.

Cardone’s dip-buying continued as the market fell. On May 27, Cardone announced on X that “CardoneCapital adds another 130 BTC on pullback” — roughly $9.7 million at then-current prices.[10]

That same day he mused that Trump would push to make the United States the crypto capital of the world, and that the government should mark its gold reserves to market value and use them to buy Bitcoin.[11]

Grant Cardone as a Degenerate Bitcoin Gambler

On June 4, 2026, as Bitcoin probed toward new lows, Cardone posted: “I got the Bitcoin blues but I’m buying more at Sixty Two.”[12]

In our opinion, this is not the language of a fiduciary — it is the language of a degenerate gambler at the table.

The pattern is textbook loss-chasing: he confesses the position causes him distress (“the blues”), and in the same breath escalates his commitment, throwing more chips on the table at $62,000 in pursuit of the $189,425 jackpot he himself invented. 

The Math: A $389 Million Position, Underwater on Every Tranche — Reconstructing Cardone Capital’s Bitcoin position from Cardone’s own public statements and press coverage:[13]

Through February 5, 2026: 2,814 BTC acquired for approximately $279 million — a blended cost basis near $99,000 per coin, including the 185 BTC purchased at $82,500 in November 2025.[14]

May 6, 2026 (Consensus Miami): approximately $100 million added at prices near $81,000 — roughly 1,235 BTC.

May 27, 2026: 130 BTC for approximately $9.7 million — roughly $73,000 to $75,000 per coin.

That puts Cardone Capital’s estimated position at approximately 4,180 BTC acquired for approximately $389 million — a blended cost basis of roughly $93,000 per coin.

At $62,875, the stack is worth approximately $263 million. The estimated unrealized loss is approximately $126 million, or 32% of capital deployed.

Every tranche is underwater. The original 1,000 coins bought above $100,000 are down nearly 40%. The Consensus Miami purchase is down 22% in one month. Even the “buy the dip” purchase of 130 BTC in late May is down roughly 15%. There is no entry point in the entire program that is currently profitable.

There is a dark irony in the milestone. Cardone announced in late 2024 a target of 4,000 BTC, which would make Cardone Capital one of the largest non-mining corporate Bitcoin holders. He has now reached that target — not by riding the asset up, but by averaging down into a crash with other people’s money.

In February the losses stood at $101 million on $279 million deployed. Today they stand at roughly $126 million on roughly $389 million deployed. Cardone responded to a nine-figure loss by increasing the size of the bet by roughly 40%.

The 80% Problem: Whose Money Is This?

The most damning fact in this entire story came out of Cardone’s own mouth at Consensus Miami: four out of five investors in the hybrid fund had zero Bitcoin exposure before investing.[15]

These are not crypto natives who understood the volatility they were buying. These are retail investors — many of them non-accredited — who came to Cardone Capital for multifamily rental cash flow and Instagram promises of passive income. They now hold a 30%-plus drawdown on a speculative digital asset embedded inside a non-traded private vehicle.

We see this as the worst of all possible worlds for an investor: Locked in an illiquid investment for up to 10 years — and a percentage of the investment is tied to a CEO acting like a degenerate gambler who keeps betting on Bitcoin as he chases the price down with each bet.

And here is the structural problem: unlike Bob Duggan’s Summit Therapeutics, where the market reprices investor thinking every single trading day, Cardone’s hybrid LLCs have no daily mark.

There is no ticker showing investors their Bitcoin sleeve is down $126 million. The losses will surface only when and how Cardone Capital chooses to present them in its periodic SEC filings — filings we will be reading closely.

The promotional architecture should be familiar to readers of our Pino v. Cardone coverage. The Ninth Circuit held that Cardone could be liable as a statutory seller for solicitations made through social media, after the SEC had already directed him to remove unsupportable return projections from his offering materials.[16]

The court record showed Cardone touting 15% returns he likely did not believe. He is now promoting 22% to 32% returns from a vehicle whose crypto component has lost a third of its value — the same pattern, with a bigger number and a more volatile asset.

The Debt Wall Has Not Moved

Nothing about the Bitcoin drawdown relieves the pressure we documented in February — it compounds it. Cardone’s 2026 debt service on his interest-only and variable-rate loans was projected at $316.2 million annually, or $26.3 million per month. His Reg A fundraising from non-accredited investors had collapsed by 65% to 81%. His Non-Accredited Fund posted a net loss while paying distributions out of investor capital rather than investment returns.[17]

Sun Belt multifamily fundamentals have not rescued him either: rents remain flat to declining in the overbuilt Florida markets where Cardone concentrated his portfolio. The Bitcoin pivot was supposed to be the liquidity bridge across this debt wall. The bridge has lost a third of its deck. If Stifel’s $38,000 scenario plays out, the bridge loses more than half — and the balloon payments do not wait for the next halving cycle.

The Scientology OT Powers Report Card

Grant Cardone is a Scientology OT VIII — the highest publicly attainable level on Hubbard’s Bridge to Total Freedom. At OT VIII, a Scientologist has spent decades and hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire what the Church promises is cause over matter, energy, space, and time.

An Operating Thetan who could actually postulate outcomes into existence would not be sitting on a $126 million Bitcoin loss. He would have postulated the price to $189,425 already — after all, he picked the number.

Twin brother and fellow OT VIII Gary Cardone — the self-styled crypto grandmaster who seeded Cardone Capital and predicted Bitcoin at $1 million by 2027 — fares no better on the report card. From $62,875, his prediction requires a sixteenfold increase in eighteen months.

The Cardone brothers’ OT certainty is colliding with the one force Scientology processing has never been able to audit away: the market.

Bitcoin does not care about OT levels. It does not respond to 10X mantras, postulates, or Fireside chats at Consensus. It is falling because of ETF outflows, a hawkish rate environment, a strong dollar, and the unwinding of leveraged speculation — macroeconomic forces that no amount of solo auditing on the Freewinds or his special locked solo-auditing rooms in Aventura or Miami can reverse.

We will continue to monitor Cardone Capital’s SEC filings, the disclosure of the Bitcoin marks in the hybrid funds, and the Bitcoin market itself. As always, we recommend that anyone considering an investment in any Cardone fund read the actual SEC disclosures rather than watching Grant Cardone’s social media videos. The legal fine print tells a very different story than the Instagram hype. Stay tuned.

[1] Jeffrey Augustine, “Scientology OT8 Grant Cardone’s $280 Million Bet on Bitcoin Implodes as Market Crashes: A Failure of Cardone’s OT Powers!,” The Scientology Money Project, February 5, 2026, https://scientologymoneyproject.com/2026/02/05/scientology-ot8-grant-cardones-280-million-bet-on-bitcoin-implodes-as-market-crashes-a-failure-of-cardones-ot-powers/

[2] Jeffrey Augustine, “Grant Cardone’s Debt Wall Has Arrived: The Bitcoin Pivot Tells the Story the SEC Filings Confirm,” The Scientology Money Project, February 1, 2026, https://scientologymoneyproject.com/2026/02/01/grant-cardones-debt-wall-has-arrived-the-bitcoin-pivot-tells-the-story-the-sec-filings-confirm/

[3] Tanaya Macheel, “Bitcoin Caps a Dismal Week as Price Wallows 50% Below Its All-Time High,” CNBC, June 5, 2026, https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/05/bitcoin-dismal-week-price-below-all-time-high-crypto-investors.html

[4] “Bitcoin Price Today: BTC at $62,875 as ETF Outflows Hit Record $4.4B over 13 Days,” BlockchainReporter, June 5, 2026, https://blockchainreporter.net/bitcoin-price-today-btc-at-62875-as-etf-outflows-hit-record-4-4b-over-13-days/

[5] “Bitcoin Plunges Below $66,000 Even as Global Stocks Hit Fresh Records,” CoinDesk, June 3, 2026, https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/06/03/bitcoin-plunges-below-usd66-000-even-as-global-stocks-hit-fresh-records

[6] “Bitcoin Falls Below $64,000, Triggers $1.1B in Liquidations,” Crypto Briefing, June 3, 2026, https://cryptobriefing.com/bitcoin-falls-below-64000-triggers-11b-in-liquidations/

[7] “Stifel Predicts Bitcoin Crash to $38,000. Yes, You Read It Right,” CoinDesk, February 5, 2026, https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/02/05/stifel-predicts-bitcoin-crash-to-usd38-000-yes-you-read-it-right

[8] “Bitcoin-Real Estate Strategy Could Outperform REITs, Says Grant Cardone. Adds More BTC to Treasury,” CoinDesk, May 6, 2026, https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/05/06/bitcoin-real-estate-strategy-could-outperform-reits-says-grant-cardone-he-adds-btc-to-treasury

[9] “Grant Cardone Is Certain: Bitcoin Will Hit $189,425 in 2026,” Benzinga, May 2026, https://www.benzinga.com/crypto/cryptocurrency/26/05/52377618/grant-cardone-is-certain-bitcoin-will-hit-189425-in-2026

[10] Kritika Mehta, “Breaking: $5.3B Cardone Capital Buys Another $10M in Bitcoin amid Price Dip,” CoinGape, May 27, 2026, https://coingape.com/breaking-5-3b-cardone-capital-buys-another-10m-in-bitcoin-amid-price-dip/ — Grant Cardone (@GrantCardone), X, May 27, 2026, https://x.com/GrantCardone/status/2059701301810692300 The same purchase was subsequently re-reported by NewsBTC (May 28) and TokenPost (June) under varying dollar figures of $9.5 to $10 million.

[11] Mehta, “Breaking: $5.3B Cardone Capital Buys Another $10M in Bitcoin amid Price Dip,” CoinGape, May 27, 2026.

[12] Grant Cardone (@GrantCardone), X, June 4, 2026 (“I got the Bitcoin blues but I’m buying more at Sixty Two.”). Cardone disclosed no purchase amount; the June 4 purchase is therefore excluded from our position and loss estimates, which are conservative as a result. https://x.com/GrantCardone/status/2062592098411368858

[13] Position and loss figures are our estimates derived from Cardone’s own public statements and press coverage of his reported purchases: the 2,814 BTC / $279 million position we documented on February 5, 2026; the additional $100 million announced at Consensus Miami 2026 (approximately 1,235 BTC at prevailing prices near $81,000); and 130 BTC (~$9.7 million) announced May 27, 2026. We note that the May 27 purchase was re-reported by multiple outlets in late May and early June under varying dollar figures; we count it once. Cardone Capital does not publish audited, contemporaneous statements of its Bitcoin holdings or cost basis; investors must wait for periodic SEC filings to learn what their funds actually hold.

[14] ChainCatcher via Bitget News, “US Real Estate Investment Firm Cardone Capital Increases Holdings by 185 BTC,” November 21, 2025, https://www.bitget.com/news/detail/12560605076769

[15] CoinDesk, “Bitcoin-Real Estate Strategy Could Outperform REITs,” May 6, 2026.

[16] Pino v. Cardone Capital, LLC, 55 F.4th 1253 (9th Cir. 2022) (holding that Cardone could be liable as a statutory seller under Section 12 of the Securities Act for solicitations made via social media).

[17] Jeffrey Augustine, “Grant Cardone’s SEC Filing Tells the Story He Won’t: The Cardone Non-Accredited Fund Is Losing Money, Bleeding Cash, and Paying Distributions Out of Investor Capital,” The Scientology Money Project, February 1, 2026, https://scientologymoneyproject.com/2026/02/01/grant-cardones-sec-filing-tells-the-story-he-wont-the-cardone-non-accredited-fund-is-losing-money-bleeding-cash-and-paying-distributions-out-of-investor-capital/