JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon got support from an unlikely source today – Jordan Belfort, better known as the “Wolf of Wall Street.”
Speaking with TheStreet, Belfort said that he believes Dimon is right about his assertion that bitcoin is fraud, telling the news outlet: “I don’t think it’s a great model.”
That said, Belfort – who plead guilty to stock fraud and money laundering in 1999 and went on to write a book called “The Wolf of Wall Street” (later made into a film) – doesn’t think cryptocurrencies won’t exist in some form or another necessarily.
“I’m not saying cryptocurrencies, there won’t be one – there will be one – but there has to be some backing by some central governments out there,” he told the publication.
He added:
“Sooner or later, a central bank or a consortium is going to issue their own cryptocurrency and that’s what will take hold.”
His criticisms later shifted to the cybersecurity risks around holding bitcoin, as well as the fact that the code underlying the cryptocurrency, rather than any central authority or institution, controls the issuance of new coins in the system.
“I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t buy bitcoin, but [what] I’m saying is I personally, myself, would be very, very careful about investing a lot of money in something that could vanish very quickly,” he concluded.
Jordan Belfort image via Shutterstock