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 transferred to community confinement, launched Druglike, a platform running on Web3, the new iteration of the internet. Druglike aims to "provide resources for anyone looking to start or contribute to early-stage drug discovery projects," according to its website.
To access the site, you must give your email address and then you receive an invitation.
"We started Druglike because in our experience, traditional drug discovery software is too difficult and expensive to use,” said Martin Shkreli, Co-Founder of Druglike. “Druglike will remove barriers to early-stage drug discovery, increase innovation and allow a broader group of contributors to share the rewards," Shkreli said in a press release on July 25.
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 collapsed completely. Indeed, Martin Shkreli Inu is down 72.2% over the past two weeks at $0.00000678 at the time of this writing, according to data firm CoinGecko.
The fall is more than 80% compared to its all-time high reached on July 27 at $0.00003431. August 12 was a Black day for Martin Shkreli Inu. That day the coin completely collapsed, touching its all-time low at $0.00000057859.
It's unclear what caused Martin Shkreli Inu's downfall, which comes as the entire crypto market is seeing its best days since June. The transactions, which can be viewed by anyone using Blockchain technology, however, show that one account, 0xshkreli.eth, transferred over 160 billion tokens to an unidentified account on Aug. 12, according to platform Etherscan.
Anonymity is the key word in the crypto space. If the transactions are recorded in a ledger and can be seen by everyone, it is nevertheless difficult to know who is behind them. According to Bloomberg News, Shkreli believes he was hacked.
"I got hacked," he 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 the Pharma Bro caused mockery on social networks, in particular on Reddit where users wondered who are the investors who wanted to invest in Martin Shkreli Inu.
"So glad I avoided that sh--coin and put all my savings in ShkreliMoon," commented one user on Reddit.
"What a name. How many days in prison did it take for him to think of that name?" another user quipped.
"If you buy that coin, you deserve to be in jail with him LMAO," said another Reddit user.
"This is one of those instances where even if you might be inclined to feel bad for people who lose money at the crypto in general. you can't really feel that bad for anyone in this specific case because come on, it's Martin Shkreli FFS. What else were they expecting?" another user lambasted.
Shkreli was barred 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 was the co-founder of the hedge funds Elea Capital, MSMB Capital Management, and MSMB Healthcare, and he was co-founder and former CEO of the pharmaceutical firms Retrophin and Turing Pharmaceuticals.
In 2015, he went from a surprisingly young, if largely unknown, finance bro type to one of the most hated men in America, when he obtained 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 on two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiring to commit securities fraud, and was charged $7.4 million in fines. He was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2018.
Shkreli, who is currently in community confinement -- home confinement or a halfway house -- will be released from the Bureau of Prisons on Sept. 14.
