Jordan Belfort, aka the Wolf of Wall Street, expects bitcoin and ethereum to be “a lot higher” than they are now. Noting that the collapsed crypto exchange FTX is a scam, he stressed that its implosion “doesn’t mean that you can disregard bitcoin completely and say it’s worthless or going to zero.”
The Wolf of Wall Street calls FTX a scam
Jordan Belfort, a former stockbroker whose memoir was adapted into a film titled “The Wolf of Wall Street,” shared some recommendations about bitcoin and ethereum in a video posted on his YouTube channel on Monday. The film was directed by Martin Scorsese and starred Leonardo DiCaprio.
Belfort founded Stratton Oakmont which functioned as a boiler room that marketed penny stocks and defrauded investors with pump-and-dump stock sales. He became a motivational speaker after pleading guilty to fraud in 1999 and went to prison for 22 months.
Regarding FTX, the crypto exchange that went bankrupt on November 11th and filed for bankruptcy, The Wolf of Wall Street described: “FTX was a scam and there is no way to defend against such a scam.” He added:
But just because FTX itself was a scam, that doesn’t mean that you can disregard bitcoin completely and say it’s worthless or going to zero. The same thing goes for ethereum.
Belfort recommends holding Bitcoin and Ethereum
Belfort believes that despite the recent crypto market selloff and FTX decline, the price of bitcoin and ether will increase significantly. However, he is skeptical about other coins, noting that apart from the two largest cryptocurrencies, he “literally wouldn’t touch crypto with a 10-foot pole right now.”
For those who already own other crypto tokens, he recommends “going step by step looking at each coin” to decide whether they should be sold and when a good time to sell might be. “This has to be based on what you bought and what you think it’s worth right now,” he said.
Belfort advised that investors should examine the fundamentals of each token and ask themselves why they bought the coin. “Was there something behind your purchase, were you expecting good news to come, did you really think the company was doing something and we were going to have some breakthrough technology?” He asked.
However, if investors bought crypto because of “the greater fool theory, meaning that you thought … someone even more foolish than you would come along and buy the coin from you at a higher price,” Belfort suggested: “Anything outside of bitcoin and ethereum, I would take a petty close look at it and consider maybe selling it.” Referencing the dot-com bubble where 99% of the deals crashed and never came back, he explained:
Do some analysis, do some research… is there a problem this coin or token is solving or are we just buying into all the hype and hoping it will continue because if honestly you know Most likely these things are never going to come back.
Belfort also revealed that he is planning to buy more bitcoin and ether. While cautioning that the two cryptocurrencies could fall further in the short term, he opined:
I think it’s a pretty good bet that right now, down here, if you buy bitcoin or ethereum, chances are [they] In five to 10 years there will be a lot more – a lot more in fact, I believe.
“If you are buying bitcoin or ethereum, it should represent a very small portion of your overall investment portfolio,” Belfort advised, noting that he would limit crypto investments to “under 10%” of his overall holdings. “That’s the money that you can essentially speculate with. You can afford to lose it.”
