Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli: “Vitalik Buterin from Ethereum is ‘brilliant’, but constantly talks some kind of ‘nonsense’”
Fresh out of jail, the controversial former pharma executive has no shortage of opinions about the crypto industry. Martin Shkreli aka pharma bro is now a crypto bro and has a lot of rave reviews.
On Monday, Shkreli tweeted Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, criticized the NFT, and lashed out at the “shitty morons” who recently launched an altcoin in his honor.
Shkreli, the former head of Turing Pharmaceuticals, was nicknamed “Pharma Bro” after the infamous 5,000% price increase for toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim. He was convicted of securities fraud in 2017 and has been on a rampage since his early release from prison on May 18.
He claimed over the weekend that he learned how to trade on decentralized exchange Uniswap while in jail. He also stated today that he received unspecified prison privileges in exchange for giving prison guards Bitcoin advice. Now that it’s out, there are reports that the culprit has already returned to Bumble and Bloomberg Terminal.
He also seems to be immersed in cryptocurrencies and has no shortage of opinions about the industry and its technologies. He said during Twitter Space today that he does not believe in Vitalik Buterin “blockchain trilemma” concept.
The blockchain trilemma is the idea that blockchain networks must make compromises while trying to achieve security, scalability, and decentralization at the same time.
“I guess he’s mad at me because I think he’s talking nonsense. You know, it has been proven that the blockchain trilemma does not exist,” Shkreli said.
He went on to say that Algorand (ALGO) founder Silvio Micali proved that the blockchain trilemma was “a mathematically weak idea.”
“No offense to Vitalik, he was great,” Shkreli added.
His remarks immediately resonated with the community.
“The ingenuous swearing of pharma bro Martin Shkreli is about to set a new low in public perception of cryptocurrencies. I find this morally problematic, even if someone is heavily into cryptocurrency,” commented developer boredGenius.
Shkreli seems to have developed his own fan base in the crypto industry. Just a few days ago, the Shkreli Inu token, named after a former hedge fund manager, was launched on Ethereum. According to Nomics, about $1 million worth of SHKI tokens have been traded on Uniswap in the last 24 hours. Shkreli said today that he received “half” of the Shkreli Inu issue, but said he did not create them.
As for his thoughts on NFT and Web3, Shkreli said he was interested but unimpressed. He called 10,000-item generative NFT collections like CryptoPunks and Bored Apes “backward” and said that Web3 is just a “buzzword”.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Shkreli said.
He continued to defend his beliefs about drug prices, arguing that high prices are morally acceptable in part because most Americans have health insurance.
“I really don’t care,” Shkreli said of his past behavior when he unreasonably inflated the price of medicines.
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