Martin Shkreli, released from prison in May after serving much of his seven-year prison sentence for securities fraud, on Monday announced Druglike, described as “a Web3 drug discovery software platform.”
Web3 has been characterized by Tesla CEO and Twitter antagonist Elon Musk as “more marketing buzzword than reality right now” and by crypto-critic and software engineer Stephen Diehl as “a vapid marketing campaign that attempts to reframe the public’s negative associations of crypto assets into a false narrative about disruption of legacy tech company hegemony.”
Web3 is notionally a more decentralized version of the internet that involves blockchain technology and cryptocurrency – famously the enabler of ransomware. This supposed decentralization has been dismissed as “an illusion.”
Shkreli’s press release this week emphasizes, “Druglike is a blockchain/Web3 software company and not a pharmaceutical company. Druglike is not engaged in pharmaceutical research or drug development.”
That makes a certain amount of sense given that Shkreli – who was jailed in 2018 for pulling off what prosecutors said was a massive Ponzi scheme, and was dubbed a “pharma…
