Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort says Shiba Inu and Dogecoin creators should be jailed

Jordan Belfort, the real Wolf of Wall Street and inspiration behind Leonardo Di Caprio’s character in the movie by the same name, believes that meme coins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu are scams. He warned investors against putting their money in these coins that have gained popularity over the past few months and voiced that their creators should be jailed. Dogecoin rose to prominence earlier this year when Tesla chief Elon Musk started tweeting about it. Many other spin-offs like Shiba Inu and Baby Doge have emerged since, with youngsters

“I’m a fan of blockchain but there’s a lot of nonsense out there, a lot of s**t coins which serve no purpose and are only there to separate people from their money. You hear crazy stories of people making millions and billions but for every person like that there are 10,000 or 100,000 people getting their a** handed to them in Shiba Inu,” Belfort told The Sun in an interview.

He added that these alt coins can be considered proper investment and people are taking advantage of an unregulated market to create coins that have no value or use. Dogecoin was created as a joke and even its creators abandoned the crypto after a few years. However, it has emerged as one of the biggest cryptocurrencies in terms of market cap this year. Dogecoin remains highly volatile and is quick to react to social media trends.

“Unscrupulous people start the coins and get into a chat room. People should go to jail seriously – they are not legitimate. There is no way they are ever going to work”, Belfort, who was jailed in the 1990s for stock market manipulation, said.

Belfort has become a successful motivational speaker since coming out of jail. He said governments across the world should look to regulate cryptocurrencies which will be good for ‘blue chip’ coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum. At least the Indian government may act on this front. A crypto bill has been formed and was tabled in the ongoing winter session of Parliament. While the finance minister has cleared that there are no plans to accept Bitcoin as a legal tender, it may end up regulating crypto.

“The sooner governments step in the better it is for crypto because when authorities start to regulate a dark market, it gets bigger and better,” Belfort said.

His fears are legitimate. Cryptocurrency scams are becoming more common as these coins are becoming increasingly popular. A few years back, Dr Ruja Ignatova persuaded millions to purchase ‘One Coin’ with the promise that it is faster, cheaper and more secure than Bitcoin. She ran away with around $4billion investment from people from 175 countries. A more recent example is that of a digital token inspired by Netflix show Squid Game. The developers did a rug pull and disappeared with investors’ money.