‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli’s crypto conversion goes sour
Martin Shkreli, the former investor who earned the nickname “Pharma Bro” after raising the price of a life-saving drug by more than 5,000% overnight, is having a difficult transition into the crypto industry.
Once America’s most hated man, Shkreli, who was released from prison in May and transitioned into the community, launched Druglike, a platform that runs on Web3, the new iteration of the Internet. Druglike aims to “provide resources to anyone looking to start or contribute to early-stage drug discovery projects,” according to its website.
To access the page, you must enter your email address and then you will receive an invitation.
“We started Druglike because our experience is that traditional drug discovery software is too difficult and expensive to use,” said Martin Shkreli, co-founder of Druglike. “Druglike will remove barriers to early drug discovery, increase innovation and allow a broader group of contributors to share in the rewards,” Shkreli said in a July 25 press release.
He added that: “Underserved and underfunded communities, such as those focused on rare diseases or in developing markets, will also benefit from access to these tools.”
The Collapse of Martin Shkreli Inu
Druglike has a native token like most crypto projects. This cryptocurrency is called Martin Shkreli Inu. Barely launched, this digital currency has just completely collapsed. In fact, Martin Shkreli Inu is down 72.2% in the past two weeks to $0.00000678 at the time of writing, according to data firm CoinGecko.
The drop is more than 80% compared to the record high reached on July 27 at $0.00003431. August 12 was a black day for Martin Shkreli Inu: on that day the coin has completely collapsed, reaching its lowest level of $0.00000057859.
It’s unclear what caused Martin Shkreli Inu’s fall, which comes as the entire crypto market sees its best days since June. However, the transactions, which can be seen by anyone using Blockchain technology, show that one account, 0xshkreli.eth, transferred over 160 billion tokens to an unidentified account on August 12, according to the platform Etherscan.
Anonymity is the key word in the crypto space. If the transactions are registered in a ledger and can be seen by everyone, it is still difficult to know who is behind it. According to Bloomberg News, Shkreli believes he was hacked.
“I was hacked,” he allegedly posted on a social media site, Discord.
Druglike did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
‘You deserve to be in jail with him’
The new setbacks of Pharma Bro caused mockery on social networks, especially on Reddit where users wondered who are the investors who wanted to invest in Martin Shkreli Inu.
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“So glad I avoided that shitcoin and put all my savings into ShkreliMoon,” commented one user on Reddit.
“What name. How many days in prison did it take him to think of that name?” joked another user.
“If you buy that coin you deserve to be in jail with him LMAO,” said another Reddit user.
“This is one of those cases where even though you might be inclined to feel bad for people who lose money in crypto in general, you can’t really feel bad for anyone in this specific case because come on, it’s Martin Shkreli FFS What else did they expect?” another user paralyzed.
Shkreli was banned from the drug industry for life by a federal judge in January. Before he became known as one of the biggest trolls in the game, Martin Shkreli co-founded the hedge funds Elea Capital, MSMB Capital Management and MSMB Healthcare, and he was the co-founder and former CEO of pharmaceutical firms Retrophin and Turing Pharmaceuticals.
In 2015, he went from a surprisingly young but largely unknown financial bro-type to one of the most hated men in America when he acquired the manufacturing license for the life-saving drug Daraprim and proceeded to raise its price from $13.50 to $750. , per pill overnight.
In 2017, Shkreli was convicted in federal court of two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and was fined $7.4 million. He was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2018.
Shkreli, who is currently confined to the community – home detention or halfway house – will be released from the Bureau of Prisons on September 14.
