Here Is What Jordan Belfort, Nick Leeson, and Martin Shkreli Think About Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies

A way to see that the scammers of the cryptocurrency world were largely inspired by the techniques invented by these former Wolves of Wall Street.

Of the three names I mentioned in my title, Jordan Belfort is probably the one that speaks to you the most. This financier inspired the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street” in which his character was played by Leonardo DiCaprio.

If Jordan Belfort's scams are now well known, those of Nick Leeson and Martin Shkreli have nothing to envy to those set up by Jordan Belfort. Unfortunately for their victims!

Nick Leeson sinks the Barings Bank

Let's start with Nick Leeson who was promoted at the age of 24 in the early '90s to head of the emerging derivatives market on the Singapore Exchange for Barings Bank. In this position, Nick Leeson was in charge of organizing all the transactions for the bank's clients, with the responsibility of ensuring the back-office and the transactions on the market itself.

In early 1995, in an attempt to make up for his already huge losses, he bet on the rise of the Asian stock markets and bought highly leveraged derivatives.

On January 17, 1995, the Kobe earthquake caused the markets to fall sharply. He then tried to compensate for his losses by increasing his positions and hoped to quickly cause a reversal of the Nikkei 225. The market continued to fall and Nick Leeson had to borrow more and more liquidity to cover his positions, until he made an accumulated loss of 860 million pounds sterling, twice the capital of the bank, causing its bankruptcy.