Jordan Belfort, the ex-stock broker whose insane life story served as the inspiration for Martin Scorsese's The Wolf Of Wall Street movie, lashed out at meme coins in his recent interview with British tabloid The Sun.
The infamous American entrepreneur said that Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, the two most popular joke cryptocurrencies, have no real value and no utility.
He then opined that the only purpose of “s**tcoins” is to part people with their money, questioning their abilities to make people rich.
While there have been numerous stories about lucky buyers making fortunes with Shiba Inu, there are infinitely more people who have been crushed by the meme coin sensation, according to Belfort:
You hear crazy stories of people making millions and billions but for every person like that there are 10,000 or a 100,000 people getting their a** handed to them in Shiba Inu. It's not a proper investment.
After soaring over 800% in October, Shiba Inu was down 29% in November.
Yet, the meme coin is seeing growing merchant adoptions, with movie theater AMC and online electronics retailer Newegg becoming the first major companies to accept the meme token.
Alex DovbnyaSome people should go to jail
The convicted felon, who spent 22 months in prison after being indicted for securities fraud and money laundering in 1998, said that some coins could be outright illegal, adding that their creators should be locked behind bars:
People should go to jail seriously - they are not legitimate. There is no way they are ever going to work.
Belfort says that legitimate projects like Bitcoin and Ether suffer because of some bad apples.
In early November, the Squid Game crypto coin crashed to virtually zero after gaining widespread media coverage despite not being affiliated in any way with the hit Netflix series. The incident became a cautionary tale for cryptocurrency investors.
Dan Burgin
U.Today Editorial Team
Vladislav Sopov