The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort: I Was Wrong About Bitcoin Going to Zero

On August 27, Jordan Belfort, the man that inspired the award-winning movie The Wolf of Street, said during an interview with Yahoo Finance that he was wrong when he claimed that the price of Bitcoin would reach Zero.

As Belfort put it, when he made that claim in 2017, he “hated cryptocurrencies” because the market was surrounded by scams. This has been slowly changing over the years but remains an adverse effect of decentralization.

“At the time that I really hated crypto, I stand by everything I said about crypto in 2017 except for one thing, I was wrong about Bitcoin going to zero, but I didn’t look closely enough because I just said it’s a scam because it just seemed like that because in all the ear markings of that,”

Bitcoin Has Proven It’s Not A Scam

A self-declared NFT Twitter enthusiast, Belfort noted that he changed his mind about Bitcoin “when it crashed and went down to three thousand dollars.” During the 2018 crash, the bitcoin price did not go to 0, as the billionaire expected, i.e., it did not crash all at once as Terra (LUNA) did, so he started to take a closer look at the project.

“What turned me, was slowly but surely, number one when it crashed and it went down to three thousand dollars, like it was still like a multi-billion dollar market, I’m like wait a second, when things crash they go like luna terra and UST that’s what happens, they’re supposed to go the way of UST, that was the first thing that made me start looking closely at it “

Also, at the time, Belfort feared that U.S. regulations could slow Bitcoin adoption, as China has been trying to do. However, unlike in China, several senators and governors in the U.S. are pro-Bitcoin and are working to make sure regulations don’t slow its path.

Jordan Belfort Sees Bitcoin as a Long-Term Investment

Belfort says people should not invest in Bitcoin expecting to realize their investments in 12 or 24 months. Ideally, they should have a horizon of about 4 to 5 years. In that time frame, he would be “surprised” that they didn’t make money because of Bitcoin’s “underlying fundamentals,” which are really strong.

“At some point in time there’ll be enough maturity with bitcoin where it starts to trade more like a store of value and less like a growth stock.”

Belfort noted that regulations are needed to better the cryptocurrency ecosystem because even though many scams and frauds exist in the traditional markets, they pale in proportion compared to the crypto sphere.

An average person with little knowledge can trade and make decent profits in the stock market. In contrast, in the crypto market, “people get slaughtered.” And this is something that could change if the proper pro-innovation regulations are in place.

As for Belfort’s preferred cryptocurrencies, the Wall Street tycoon made it clear that he only trusts Bitcoin and Ethereum and that any other investment he will make in other currencies would be for speculation or gambling with his friends and, as he says, it is a move that requires people to be willing to lose everything.