Michael Saylor Says FTX CEO is The Wolf of Wall Street for Crypto

According to Michael Saylor, former CEO of Microstrategy and an outspoken advocate for Bitcoin, the flagship cryptocurrency may stand out to benefit from the aftermath of FTX. Speaking on CNBC’s ‘Squawk on the Street,’ Saylor claimed that the market turmoil and volatility would be suitable for Bitcoin and a “handful” of other coins because it would wipe out thousands of pointless cryptocurrencies.

Saylor blamed the exchange’s failure on the lack of transparency. The bitcoin advocate argued that a company’s cryptocurrency holdings should be “nobody else’s liability.” He cautioned that further regulatory oversight of FTX is inevitable, given the current situation. However, he emphasized that if authorities react too strongly to FTX’s collapse, it might hurt the sector as a whole.

In a separate appearance on Yahoo Finance Live, Saylor compared FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried to the infamous trader and stockbroker Jordan Belford.

“I mean, in fact, in a sense, SBF is like the Jordan Belfort of the crypto era. Instead of ‘The Wolf of Wall Street,’ they’ll make a movie called ‘The King of Crypto’” Saylor added.

Saylor continued, stating that Bankman-Fried “was using counterfeit money and stolen money” to push against all the virtues and core principles of the cryptocurrency industry.

He was working to corrupt regulations and corrupt the political process. When you have actors that use corrupt counterfeit, stolen money in order to undermine the industry, it’s not good for anybody.

Saylor’s remarks follow reports that the biggest institutional Bitcoin investor, MicroStrategy Inc, had $1.8 billion in unrealized losses on its Bitcoin holdings. Saylor quit as CEO of MicroStrategy in August 2022 because the firm had lost $1 billion, and he wanted to focus on the company’s Bitcoin strategy.

Since then, in September 2022, the business splurged $6 million of its excess cash on 301 Bitcoins. The price of Bitcoin has dropped by roughly 15% since the purchase, so the company is already losing money on the acquisition.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin was hovering above $16,700, up 0.9% over the past 24 hours. However, the largest cryptocurrency was down more than 18% from last week.

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