Anthony Scaramucci: “20% of my net worth is in Bitcoin” | Interview

Hey everyone, it's Rachel Wolfson here with cointelegraph. And today I'm here with a very special guest, Anthony Scaramucci. Did I pronounce your last name correctly?

Rachel, you're doing great. Okay, you had me at special.

Great. Yes. So he is obviously the founder of SkyBridge Capital. So good to have you here today.

I couldn't be happier to be here. And thank you guys for coming to the event. We're sold out because of people like you, so I greatly appreciate it, Rachel.

Yeah.

And we're off to a good start. We have the Prime Minister this morning, Sam Bankman Fried has spoken and I think we're underway to a great event.

Yeah, so far so good. So Anthony, can you tell me a little bit about some industry trends that we're seeing right now?

Well, I mean, there's a lot going on at the same time. You know, you've got a war going on and you've got the specter of US Inflation and so that's curbed growth in the United States. And you've seen the NASDAQ and most of the indexes sell off, you know, and they're at that correction Sort of 10% level right now, which is affecting the cryptocurrency markets. And if you just did an overlay of the NASDAQ and the cryptocurrency markets, they are unbelievably correlated for right now. So I think that that's creating a lot of churn and pain in the markets while that's happening. Billions of dollars are going into Web3, the development of Web3, the formulation of layer one tokens, which will ultimately be used as these platforms for transactions across the world. And so I'm long term very bullish. I'm long term very excited about where everything is going. But I think short term we're going to have some issues here and some headwinds as a result of the post COVID 19 situation, the war and the specter of inflation and the supply chain issues. So all of that's mixed into the near term. I try to caution people, you know, there's a reason why the dead people at Charles Schwab have the best returns. Okay. So if you look at the accounts at Charles Schwab, what accounts do the best, it's the people that are dead. Why? Because they're not doing anything. They're staying patient. Right? Is until the estate planners get in there and they start ripping up those accounts. So I try to tell people have a long term thinking process about crypto it's very, very early stages, but you're going to see massive things happening in this market over the next five years.

Right. And we recently witnessed a very relevant event actually with Fidelity allowing, you know, the Bitcoin for a 1K. So I want to get your thoughts on seismic event.

So I would not understate that event. I put that out on Twitter yesterday. Remember what Fidelity did to the US stock market when the 401ks were developed? Fidelity said, okay, we're one of the larger asset managers. We're going to use our sales and distribution platform, our great money management skills, and we're going to introduce the average investor to the notion of owning stocks and mutual funds. And so I predict that Fidelity will do for bitcoin and possibly other cryptocurrencies down the road what they did for the US stock market in the 80s and into the early 90s. And so this is a transformational, seismic thing. They have $2.4 trillion in retirement accounts, custody, debt. Fidelity just imagine a small sliver of that 1 to 3% moving into, into Bitcoin. And that doesn't even include the additional potential investors. And of course, skybridge, we will be offering that to our clients as soon as we can.

Awesome. In terms of.

And our employees, I meant to say.

Right, right, right. In terms of a timeline with the Fidelity news, I mean, skybridge will be offering that to employees, as you mentioned. But when do you think we're going to really see that have mainstream adoption? I think it's kind of being rolled out now. It was just announced, but I don't know when that's.

Yeah, so it's being rolled out. I think MicroStrategy is on board already. I think they picked a few customers that have lots of custody with them that they're going to do immediately, I think will be. Skybridge will be in the next wave. But what I do think will happen, Rachel, is that there's 73 million people in the United States that own a cryptocurrency or Bitcoin. And so I think there's going to be a tremendous amount of reverse inquiry at corporations large and small. People are going to like, okay, yes, I want that stock and bond offering for my 401k, but where's my cryptocurrency exposure? And so even though there'll probably be a general reluctancy from, let's say the Fortune 50, the largest corporations in the US because they'll be slow moving, they'll be concerned about the changes. They won't like the volatility. I do think that their employees are going to say, please, I would like to have some cryptocurrency exposure. So Fidelity is in the right place. I predict that others will join Fidelity in that movement. And then of course, the big elephant in the room is when will the United States have a cash etf, a bitcoin cash etf. So I'm hoping that will be by the end of the year. If that happens, you're going to force all of the major financial services institutions to have a bitcoin cash offering. I don't think they want to go into a meeting with somebody and say, well, we have all of this stuff, but we have no ability for you to get bitcoin or cryptocurrency exposure if it becomes legal. From the SEC or the CFTC perspective.

Now you say a bitcoin cash ETF by the end of this year?

I think so, yeah. I mean, I'm more bullish about it now because they just, they just approved a bitcoin futures under the 33 and 34 Act. It's a little bit more stringent than the 40 Act. I also think that the Congress is indicating, lots of people now are indicating that they're more pro crypto, more cryptocurrency friendly. Remember, you've got 73 million people that own a cryptocurrency. Mayor Suarez was here at a dinner that we hosted last night. He said, how many people do you think you need to vote for you to be the American president? He said, it's between 55 million and 60 million people. And so this is why we all think that the next presidential candidacy, the last two standing figures, the Republican and the Democrat, will likely be pro crypto. A lot of these people are single issue voters. I think that's going to percolate through the Congress. I think you'll eventually see these changes.

Right. Okay.

Positive regulation ahead is a prediction from Skybridge.

Right? Yeah. Well, that's really exciting. Now, in terms of. You mentioned something during the press conference about tokenization of everything is what it seems like.

Yes.

Can you elaborate on that?

Yes. Well, I think that we're very, very early. One of the examples I use is when we were logging on to Web one and we were using a modem and we had that big fat box computer and it took 35 seconds for the landing page from AOL to come on our computers. It would have been very hard to imagine where we'd be today with the Internet, where we're now streaming hundreds of millions of people are streaming 4K video over the Internet. So think about how wide the pipes have gotten. Think about how much data that we can push through these pipes. And I think that's going to be what happens with Web3. Right now, we can't see all of the wonderful applications that are coming, but one example I gave. Imagine you're at the Starbucks. You have a tokenized stock on your phone. We started with stock certificates, then we went to Q SIP numbers, and now they're digitally expressed in your account somewhere like a Morgan Stanley or Fidelity. But what if they become tokenized and they're actually on the blockchain, these stock certificates, and you can hold it in your smart wallet on your phone. You could be walking into the Starbucks and, and talking to the barista. And the barista says, okay, do you want to pay with your Starbucks stock? We're having a share repurchase program here, and we'll give you a 15% discount to buy your cup of coffee with your Starbucks stock. So I think weird things are going to happen. We'll be able to transfer bonds to stocks, stocks to bonds. We'll be able to tokenize just about anything that has value in our world, and that's going to be wonderfully expansive for our society.

Right? Yeah, wonderful. So can you talk a little bit about the Skybridge portfolio?

Yeah, sure.

Are there any altcoins in there or just Bitcoin?

Yes, yes. So, no, we started with Bitcoin. I told, first of all, I'm a, you know, less my disastrous experience in the White House. I've been in this business for 33 years. And so as an institutional investor and somebody that thinks like an institutionalist, it was very hard to move my clients into cryptocurrency. You know, I had one client, a sovereign wealth fund that will remain nameless. When I started to add positions in our core account, Bitcoin, he says, okay, I'm going to fire you for this. This is ridiculous. At the end of the year, he called me, he said, thank you for helping me, pulling me into the future. And so we've got a lot of that going on. So we started with Bitcoin, then we waded into Ethereum, then we waded into some other layer one tokens like Solana. We have an Algorand fund. We're very big, very big bulls on Algorand. Silvio McCauley is here. We had dinner with him last night. I think that's going to be one of the real layer one protocols that surfaces to the top. It's just My opinion. And so the answer is yes. We have a diversified cryptocurrency portfolio. We have a diversified fund for cryptocurrencies, and we have singular funds. We have a Bitcoin fund, an Ethereum fund, an Algorand fund. And I would imagine that we'll have other token funds unfolding in the coming years.

Right, right. I hope so.

We also have any, if I don't mind me mentioning, we also have an etf, which is publicly traded securities. It's under the symbol crpt. And this is what I call the picks and shovels of the digital innovation of the economy. So this would be things like Marathon digital, core, scientific, microstrategy, but it would also include something like a PayPal. These are all companies, a square now known as Block. These are all companies that are geared towards the growth of this ecosystem.

Right, right. And that's obviously very important, the growth of the ecosystem. Anthony, can you kind of touch on your portfolio? Is that possible? Do you hold bitcoin?

Yeah, no, listen, I have about 20% of my net worth in Bitcoin. I've got, you know, know, probably 4 or 5% in Algorand and a couple of percent in Eth. And this was really born from appreciation. You know, I probably started with a 4 or 5% portfolio. I think my first Bitcoin I bought in 2020 was probably in the 12 to 13,000 zone. Then I was buying some at 16, 18, you know, and. But also I bought coins at 65,000. So I'm not trying to say that I'm a genius or anything like that. I've just made a macro bet on Bitcoin. And so my portfolio personally, I probably have almost a quarter of my net worth in this stuff.

Okay, great. Next question. So Elon Musk recently bought Twitter.

Yes.

So what are your thoughts on that?

Well, so he has a purchase and sale agreement, it looks like, in place for Twitter. He has to close that transaction. So I hope he does. I'm a big Elon Musk fan. I think he's one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time, not just of our time. He may be the greatest entrepreneur. He's a bold visionary thinker and I think he sees something at Twitter that he can transform. And I do think it will happen through the process of decentralization. So he could end up tokenizing Twitter and he could end up creating authentication over the blockchain for people, eliminating all of this poison and pollution on Twitter and then just coming up with a set of rules related to free speech. Certainly he doesn't want hate crimes and hate invective on Twitter. He certainly doesn't want you to proverbially yell fire in a theater on Twitter. So he doesn't want the nasty side of free speech there. He probably doesn't want the disinformation, all the robotic technology from our political adversaries like Russia putting all of this nonsense and sewage on Twitter. So I think he sees what Twitter is and the great things about that public square, but he also sees the more nefarious side of it. And I would make the bet on him. I think he's a transformative figure. I think there's things he could use that sort of Web one people would be reluctant to use, Web three tools, if you will, that could make Twitter a better platform, a safe platform for people to use and also something that's dialed more into the free speech elements of our society.

Right, I agree and I hope so because the imposters on Twitter and Instagram.

People are really tired of that. I mean, you know, I know people that have to take, particularly celebrities have to take Twitter breaks because they get hit up by all these bots and all of this nastiness and this mean spiritedness. So I'm not saying that's going to go away because that's part of human nature, but I do think we can do some things to clean it up. If you're going to say something mean spirited like that, let's authenticate who you are and then you have the opportunity to do it.

Right, Right. Good point. What can we expect next from Skybridge?

It's a really good question. So we're going to, we're going to do this conference, the SALT conference. It'll be crypto heavy, but a little bit broader. That's a typical mandate in September. That's September 12th to the 14th at the Javits Center.

Okay.

We expect to begin be in Singapore at the Marina Bay Sands November 16th to the 18th and then eventually back to Abu Dhabi in March. And so Sam and I have a vision of creating four events a year. I'd like to return to the Baha Mar next year. I think it's a wonderful place. Sam and I spent some time with Prime Minister Davis this morning talking about the growth here and how exciting it is for the island and the country of the Bahamas to make this a cryptocentric place where the Bahamas will be known in five years as one of the most forward thinking, economic visionary countries. And so we want to be a part of that. And you know, for myself I'm looking to expand our assets, boost our product line, related digital assets and digital innovation. And I'm having a lot of fun doing it. It's a lot more fun than politics, I can tell you that, Rachel. So I'm going to be spending my time doing this.

Great. And would you like to give a bitcoin price prediction?

Well, I've always been wrong, so don't go by me. I do see bitcoin trending towards 100,000. I would have thought that would have happened last year. But I miss size, the length of COVID I miss size. Some of the policy things that we did related to Covid in terms of the induction of all of this money that we put into the economy, which has led to the inflation. So I got those things wrong. But I do think supply demand issues being what they are, let's say there's 20 million coins. You know, there's likely a million or so that have been lost in the early adoption. We know that there's approximately 2ish million left to be mined or just under 2 million. So you're talking about a situation where you have tens of millions of people that will probably own bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, but there's only 20 million coins. To put it in this perspective, JP Morgan said last month there's approximately 53 to 55 million US dollar millionaires. So if you only have 20 million coins, you don't even have enough bitcoin for each millionaire to own a full bitcoin. So I want you to think of the magnitude of that. And of course, with Fidelity now onboarding this and creating this platform of demand for something that has finite supply.

Right, Wonderful.

Well, Anthony, as I said that the plane went across the horizon. It's good omens.

Yeah, good omen. We love good omens. Anthony, it's been a real pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us.

All right, great to be here.

See you next time.

Thanks for having me on.

Thank you.