Jordan Belfort, Still the Wolf, Likes Crypto Now

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MIAMI BEACH — Jordan Belfort was lounging by the pool on a sunny April morning, sipping Red Bull and sharing a cautionary story. Not the ordinary one about his imprisonment on 10 counts of securities fraud and cash laundering: This time, he’d been the sufferer. Last fall, he defined to a bunch of businessmen gathered at his palatial residence, a hacker had stolen $300,000 of digital tokens from his cryptocurrency pockets.

He had gotten the unhealthy information at dinner on a Friday, he stated, whereas he was telling a venture-capitalist buddy about the time he sank his yacht throughout a drug-fueled romp in the mid-90s. After breaking into Mr. Belfort’s account, the hacker transferred massive portions of Ohm, a well-liked cryptocurrency token, to a separate pockets — a publicly seen transaction Mr. Belfort might do nothing to reverse. “You can see the place the cash is,” he stated. “It’s the most irritating factor.”

Mr. Belfort, 59, is finest identified for “The Wolf of Wall Street,” a tell-all memoir about his debauched Nineteen Nineties profession in excessive finance, which the director Martin Scorsese tailored right into a 2013 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the hard-partying protagonist. These days, the real-life Mr. Belfort is a guide and gross sales coach, charging tens of hundreds of {dollars} for personal classes.

This month, at his home in Miami Beach, he hosted 9 blockchain lovers and entrepreneurs for a weekend-long crypto workshop — an opportunity to hang around with the Wolf and luxuriate in an “intimate financial experience” together with his crypto-industry buddies.

An extended line of celebrities has tried to revenue from the cryptocurrency increase, showing in widely mocked crypto commercials or flogging nonfungible tokens, the distinctive digital collectibles often called NFTs. Mr. Belfort stated he has refused to take part in the worst of the shilling. He has declined provides to launch a line of Wolf-themed NFTs, he stated, though “I might simply make $10 million.”

He can be a latest convert away from crypto skepticism. Not way back, he shot a YouTube video about the risks of Bitcoin, which he referred to as “frickin’ madness” and “mass delusion.” Over the years, he stated, he progressively modified his thoughts, as he realized extra about cryptocurrencies and costs skyrocketed.

Now, Mr. Belfort is an investor in a handful of start-ups, together with a new NFT platform and an animal-themed crypto undertaking that he stated is “making an attempt to take the dog-and-pet ecosystem and put it onto the blockchain.”

Whatever his crypto bona fides, Mr. Belfort is definitely certified to debate the topic of economic fraud, a serious drawback in the digital-asset {industry}. In the Nineteen Nineties, the agency he based, Stratton Oakmont, operated a complicated stock-manipulation scheme. At the top of their wealth, he and his enterprise companions consumed monumental portions of cocaine and quaaludes and recurrently employed prostitutes. Mr. Belfort ultimately served 22 months in jail.

Given that historical past, it will possibly really feel barely surreal to listen to an older, extra grizzled Mr. Belfort proclaim that he’s “massively trying ahead to regulation” in the crypto {industry}. “I’m not involved in separating folks from their cash,” he stated. “That’s the reverse of how I act proper now.”

Still, the crypto workshop at his home was not free: Guests paid one Bitcoin for a seat, or the money equal, which is roughly $40,000.

The workshop started at 9 a.m. on Saturday. The company — chosen from a pool of greater than 600 candidates — milled round Mr. Belfort’s yard, consuming made-to-order omelets and buying and selling tips on Bitcoin mining and tokenomics. A crypto miner from Kazakhstan relaxed in the solar with an aspiring blockchain influencer who runs a roofing firm in Idaho. A Florida businessman defined his plan to make use of NFTs in a start-up that he’s pitching as Tinder for music. Some of the company stated they paid for the workshop as a result of they’re die-hard followers of the Wolf; others merely needed to community with fellow entrepreneurs.

By 9:15 a.m., the mimosas had been flowing, however Mr. Belfort was nowhere to be seen. “The U.S. greenback goes to crap,” stated the roofing government, Doug Bartlett. A couple of minutes handed. Still no Wolf. “The Wolf continues to be sleeping?” one visitor questioned aloud.

At final, Mr. Belfort emerged from the home, sporting pale denims and darkish sun shades. Mr. Belfort has brief darkish hair; he’s extra wrinkled than he was in the ’90s, however his face continues to be set in a perpetually boyish grin. He stopped on the staircase down from the porch to survey the scene: 9 males wearing varied shades of enterprise informal — polo shirts, flip-flops, untucked button-down shirts. “I assume we nonetheless have to work on female adoption of cryptocurrency,” he stated. “We received to get some women right here subsequent yr.” He paused. “Women.”

Someone handed Mr. Belfort a can of Red Bull. (It was about 9:30 a.m.) “I’m gonna want the sugar,” he stated. After a couple of minutes of chitchat, he ushered the group into the eating room, the place every place at the desk was set with a pocket book and a replica of “Way of the Wolf,” a gross sales handbook Mr. Belfort revealed in 2017.

Mr. Belfort has spent the previous 20 years making an attempt to rebuild his fame, however indicators of the outdated Wolf had been in all places. Behind his spot at the head of the desk, a completely stocked liquor shelf took up most of the wall. (He hasn’t gotten excessive in 25 years, he stated, however he typically drinks.) Next to the shelf hung a poster designed to resemble an entry on the periodic desk — Qu for quaalude — itemizing varied “drug details,” together with “finest intercourse ever.”

After a spherical of introductions, Mr. Belfort started a lecture on the trivialities of cryptocurrencies, from the variations between Bitcoin and Ethereum to the rise of decentralized autonomous organizations. He shared his knowledge on crypto-based “smart contract” systems (“a few of them are actually good; a few of them are silly”) and recounted outdated tales about his collaboration with Leo and Marty.

“Leo had never done drugs,” he stated. “I needed to educate him on that.”

For a gathering of crypto evangelists, it was hanging how a lot time everybody spent reliving their greatest losses. Nearly half the group stated they’d been hacked. One visitor stated he’d misplaced cash when the cryptocurrency change Mt. Gox collapsed in 2014. Two others stated they’d burned massive portions of tokens in dangerous trades.

The vitality in the room lifted with the arrival of Chase Hero, certainly one of a sequence of visitor audio system Mr. Belfort had recruited for the weekend. A crypto investor and gaming fanatic, Mr. Hero declared that stablecoins — cryptocurrencies whose worth is pegged to the U.S. greenback — are “the greatest innovation since sliced bread.”

“It appears vivacious and insane and virtually borderline a Ponzi scheme,” Mr. Hero stated of his favourite stablecoin undertaking. “Which makes it the excellent asset for cryptocurrency as a result of that’s what these youngsters love.”

One of Mr. Belfort’s company, Svein-Erik Nilsen, a Norwegian entrepreneur, began describing his personal enterprise ambitions. Did Mr. Hero have any suggestions? The key to beginning a brand new enterprise, he replied, is aggressive advertising to face out from the crowd. “Imagine going to a Brazilian seashore and looking for one single scorching chick. There’s eight million,” Mr. Hero stated. “The thought is the similar factor right here. You need to do silly, dumb advertising to get it on the market.”

A number of hours later, the group adjourned for dinner at Carbone, a high-end Italian restaurant in Miami Beach the place Mr. Belfort eats as usually as twice every week. As they dined on caviar and rigatoni, a few of the company shared tales of their very own debauchery; Mr. Belfort, it turned out, was not the solely wolf in the room. Two company mentioned the mechanics of pursuing youthful girls with out risking entanglement in a “sugar child” state of affairs. Someone speculated about how an enterprising strip membership proprietor may incorporate NFTs into the enterprise.

Soon dialog turned to a membership in Japan the place girls are stated to cavort with octopuses. Mr. Belfort needed to know extra: Were the girls in Japan stunning? Later, he confirmed the group an iPhone video he took at an S-and-M-themed bar, the place the waitresses flog the prospects.

Artem Bespaloff, the chief government of the crypto mining firm Asic Jungle, leaned throughout the desk to explain his private conversion to the method of the Wolf. He was planning to go to medical faculty, he stated, when he discovered a replica of “The Wolf of Wall Street” at the library.

“I stated, ‘This is what I need to do,’” Mr. Bespaloff recalled. “I ended up stealing the guide from the library.”

“So I used to be an excellent affect,” Mr. Belfort stated with amusing. Still, he stated, he regrets his habits in these days — it was improper, and he might have gotten even richer if he hadn’t damaged the regulation. “I missed the web increase,” he stated. “I might’ve made 100x more cash.”

“Well,” Mr. Bespaloff replied, “you’re in crypto now.”

“You reside and study,” Mr. Belfort stated.

Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.