Former President Donald Trump appears to be getting into the cryptocurrency business, and the New York Times reports that the "serial entrepreneurs" he has brought in to helm his foray have checkered pasts.
According to the Times, Trump crypto business partners Chase Herro and Zachary Folkman have been "leaving behind a trail of lawsuits and unpaid debt and taxes" in their assorted ventures.
Herro, for one, describes himself as a "dirtbag of the internet" and an ace salesman, whereas Folkman once ran a pickup artist advice firm called Date Hotter Girls.
Despite the shadiness of their business histories, the two men have earned endorsements from Donald Trump Jr., who said recently that, "You could put them in a boardroom at Goldman Sachs, and they're going to smoke the people in the room."
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Some experts on the cryptocurrency industry who spoke with the Times, however, expressed skepticism that the two men could "smoke" anyone.
Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University, told the Times that Herro and Folkman "did not appear to have the technical or financial savvy to make the venture work."
And John Reed Stark, a former senior Securities and Exchange Commission official, told the Times that Herro and Folkman's pitch for their brand of cryptocurrency is "a bunch of nonsense, and a terrible opportunity for investors."
To back up this point, the Times noted that Herro and Folkman have "a history of jumping from project to project" and "together or separately, they have formed at least 17 companies, gravitating to the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, both tax havens."
