Yet another high-profile criticism came against Bitcoin, this time from the “Wolf of Wall Street” himself, Jordan Belfort.
Belfort called Bitcoin a fraud and said that “the biggest problem I see from Bitcoin, and why I would never buy it, is because they can easily steal it from you through hacking. I know people who lost all their money like that.”
It came only weeks after Chase Bank CEO Jamie Dimon called Bitcoin a fraud, and made his distaste for Bitcoin crystal clear when he suggested he would fire any employee trading Bitcoin on the company’s accounts. However, JP Morgan bought a large block of Bitcoins days after the CEO statement.
But Jamie Dimon is not the only one with this view on Bitcoin. Ray Dalio, the founder and head of the world’s largest hedge fund Bridgewater, recently stated that Bitcoin is “a highly speculative market”, and in fact is a “bubble”.
Belfort also finds it “bizarre” that Bitcoin is only backed by a program that creates artificial scarcity and said that because of this, the digital currency is not sustainable.
Although Belfort believes in the concept of cryptocurrencies, he stated the current model holds too many problems. According to him, there is a future for digital currencies, but he thinks it’s essential for digital coins to get “some sort of backing” by central governments.
In his opinion, a central bank will sooner or later introduce their own cryptocurrency, which will be more sustainable.
“There will be a time when everybody is freaking out about Bitcoin and dumps it and who knows what’s going to happen?”
In a situation like that there’s no buffer, for example the Federal Reserve, to cushion the blow.
He issued a final warning to investors and said, “Be very careful not to invest a lot of money into something that could vanish very quickly.”