The former stockbroker Belfort Jordan is narrating his loss during a hack in crypto. Jordan is also known as the “wolf of Wall Street” and is very famous and an expert in the crypto market, but still, he has faced hacking.
He claims that he has lost more than $300,000 in the crypto market due to a hack. Now, he has decided to transfer his assets from exchanges to cold storage.
Given that he has “skin in the game,” when asked how much faith he now places in cryptocurrency exchanges, Belfort said it is none.
“So, in actuality, I was hacked. Last year, I misplaced nearly $300,000 using the [crypto wallet] MetaMask.”
He didn’t say how he was compromised when it happened explicitly, how much cryptocurrency was taken, or whether an inquiry had been launched or was ongoing.
Belfort asserted that he no longer had any assets listed for trade, saying: “No money of mine is stored in cryptocurrencies on exchanges. With [crypto wallet] Ledger, everything is off, so to speak, in a cold storage wallet.”
He claimed that because it is “actually like the Wild West,” this business is “a very, very, very challenging one right now.”
Regulation, according to Belfort, is both the cause and the answer.
“In order to bring at least some sort of order to the turmoil, [the business] really needs regulation.
It needs the SEC [US Securities and Exchange Commission] or another authority to step in. There will still be fraud even when they do it. Every market has one, always.”
Belfort indicated that the great majority of cryptocurrencies, or around 99.99% of them, should be regulated as securities when asked what he believed was necessary for the sector to restore confidence and reduce fraud.
“Bitcoin, in my opinion, is not a security. Whatever you choose to call it, bitcoin is, in fact, a commodity or property. Ethereum is also decentralised; therefore, I believe that’s an entirely different thing, “He declared.
He continued by stating that there could be some other cryptocurrencies that aren’t securities, but “None of the others is actually mine. The only things I possess are the two. I have some minor items that are solely speculative investments I have never sold and hold on my own, correct?”
FTX Is Not A Market
The former stockbroker talked about the FTX crash and the problems it has brought throughout the majority of the conversation.
He claimed, however, that there is a “misconception” regarding FTX.
“The cryptocurrency industry has a peculiar habit of labelling things and calling them things they are not. For instance, FTX is not an exchange. It is a self-clearing brokerage company.”
Belfort said that what the business did was fraudulent, saying:
“It was a brokerage business where the funds were mixed, and once the money was taken, it was merely spent extravagantly. However, they also lost a lot of money by being bad traders.”