Citron's Andrew Left Calls Crypto A 'Complete Fraud': Is The Short Seller Talking His Own Book?

Citron Research's Andrew Left believes cryptocurrencies are nothing but a fraud. 

What Happened: The renowned short seller talked about crypto Monday at a conference about fraud in financial markets, according to a Reuters report.

When asked about areas of the market he could see potential fraud in, Left responded: "I think crypto is just complete fraud, over and over and over."

The report noted Left did not say whether he had investments in cryptocurrencies.

Why It Matters: Although the short seller didn't mention any positions, it seems Left could be talking about his own book.

As previously reported by Benzinga, Left took to Twitter Inc TWTR last month to call out the high valuations of Ethereum ETH/USD and Bitcoin BTC/USD.

"As ETH still trades above 1000 with a market cap of 140 billion. We say WTF?" Citron said via tweet. "Every high-flying real software/cloud company is trading back to pre-pandemic levels which puts ETH at 200 (which is still expensive)."

The firm quickly followed up that tweet by calling out Galaxy Digital Holdings BRPHF CEO Mike Novogratz.

Just saw Mike N on CNBC discussing use cases and the first and only thing he said was the ability to buy collectibles. Anyone who thinks smart contracts and DAO are going to replace escrows and banks has obviously never conducted real business

— Citron Research (@CitronResearch) June 15, 2022

The short seller also targeted Bitcoin, saying it was overpriced and lacked use cases.

"If you want to say that BTC is digital gold because it has collective thought than that is your choice. But to think that a 140 bil software company whose primary use case is to buy online collectibles then joke will be on you," Citron said.

Left announced that Citron Research would no longer be publishing short reports following backlash from his short of GameStop Corp. GME. However, that hasn't stopped him from bashing assets he is already probably short. 

$BTC, $ETH Price Action: At press time Tuesday, Bitcoin was down 2.47% over a 24-hour period at $19,913.64 and Ethereum was down 5.30% over a 24-hour period at $1,0781.07.

Photo: Petre Barlea from Pixabay.