Jordan Belfort - the real ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ - has slammed meme coin creators, saying they should be jailed.
The trader said that while he is a ‘fan’ of cryptocurrency, some of the newer ‘meme’ coins, such as Shiba Inu, have ‘no value and no use’.
Belfort, who was played by Leonardo DiCaprio in 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street, told the Sun creators are ‘taking advantage of an unregulated market’ to make cash.
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He said: “I'm a fan of blockchain but there's a lot of nonsense out there, a lot of s*** 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 a 100,000 people getting their a** handed to them in Shiba Inu.
“It's not a proper investment.”
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Shiba Inu is a new cryptocurrency launched last year and designed to be a rival to Dogecoin, even featuring the same breed of dog as its mascot.
Belfort added: “People are taking advantage of an unregulated market and creating s***coins which have no value and have no use.”
He went on to say that creators of meme coins, such as MILF Coin, are ‘unscrupulous people’ who ‘start the coins and get into a chat room and saying stuff that's blatantly illegal’.
“People should go to jail seriously - they are not legitimate. There is no way they are ever going to work", Belfort said.
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However, he isn’t against all cryptocurrencies and believes that government regulation would actually be a good thing for well-established ‘blue chip’ coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
He told the news outlet that he thinks sooner or later someone will be charged over the dodgy currencies, which he thinks gives cryptocurrency a bad name.
He added: “The wheels of justice grind slowly but they do grind forward, despite no one getting in trouble yet, I have to believe the government is looking at this and saying 'wait a second, there's all these people scamming.'"
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Belfort himself will be familiar with slow wheels of justice - he spent 22 months in jail after pleading guilty to securities fraud and money laundering back in 1999 in relation to his time at Stratton-Oakmont, as anyone who watched Martin Scorsese's film will know.
Belfort continued: “What I hate about it the most is that legitimate stuff - it gives those digital coins a bad name.
“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.”
Earlier this month, a former supermarket worker revealed that he was able to retire after making a fortune with Shiba Inu.
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Rob managed to get his hands on the coin early after it launched in August last year and then sat back as its value skyrocketed.
After gradually investing $8,000 (£5,900), he ended up with a fortune of more than $1 million (£748,000) by November this year.
He told Fortune: "I come from quite a poor background. I could never have even fantasised about having this much money. But it wasn't gone. It wasn't a dream."
Featured Image Credit: AlamyTopics: Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin