On Friday (March 4), former White House Director of Communications Anthony Scaramucci, who is the founder and managing partner of global alternative investment firm SkyBridge Capital (“SkyBridge”), shared his latest thoughts on Bitcoin.
SkyBridge Capital is “an SEC-registered investment adviser and global alternative investment manager that invests in hedge funds, digital assets, private equity, and real estate.”
On 4 January 2021, Skybridge announced “the launch of the SkyBridge Bitcoin Fund LP, which provides mass-affluent investors with an institutional-grade vehicle to gain exposure to Bitcoin.”
The press release went on to say:
“Additionally, on behalf of its flagship funds, SkyBridge initiated a position, valued at approximately $310 million at the time of this release, in funds investing in Bitcoin during November and December 2020.“
Then on 24 October 2021, Scaramucci told CNBC’s Capital Connection:
“Do the homework on bitcoin, understand what it is… Anybody that does the homework … ends up investing into it. Look at Ray Dalio, a bitcoin skeptic, now a bitcoin investor... These are brilliant guys [who] did the homework and drew a conclusion that they needed to own a piece of bitcoin.“
Scaramucci mentioned that so far he has invested $1 billion into BTC:
“For me, I have over a billion dollars in Bitcoin now. I started accumulating that position last year. I think that this manifests itself into a gigantic asset class. This is equivalent, to me, to digital gold.“
However, he does not consider himself a Bitcoin evangelist :
“Guys like Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy think it’s better than that, could be 10 times gold. I’m not that optimistic about it. I am not a Bitcoin evangelist. I don’t think that Jesus and Moses got together and made a baby and named it Bitcoin; that’s not me. But I am an investor in this because I see the technical properties associated with it.
“Ultimately, this is a de-layering mechanism for society… It’s a ledger defined by math. And when you think about the history of money, a ledger defined by math that has a scarcity to it, where no politician or policymaker can corrupt it or add supply to it, I think is a fascinating thing. I think it will have a big position in the global economy over the next decade.“
Yesterday, Scaramucci shared his latest thoughts on crypto and the Fed during an interview with Melissa Francis on Magnifi Media by TIFIN.
With regard to Bitcoin (and crypto in general), he said:
- “We store our Bitcoin at Fidelity and NYDIG.“
- “I have never said that it was an inflation hedge… I do not see in its current state as an inflation hedge. I see this as an early technological adoption story that is mirroring a lot of what happened in Web 1.“
- Average investors with no exposure to crypto should buy some Bitcoin, but it is important that they average in (“The only way you can handle a technology like this is to dollar cost average in.“)
- “Gary Gensler has made a decision that it’s important for him to be tough on crypto. He understands it as well as anybody… He taught cryptocurrency courses at MIT.”
- “I think over time what will happen is [that] the cooler heads… will win out. I don’t think the United States wants to cede its leadership in financial services… If they make a decision to disallow or to overly regulate cryptocurrencies, you’re going to see capital and intellectual flight from the country… I think it ends up getting appropriately regulated.“
- Bitcoin could get to $100,000 this year. He is “very confident” that it could reach that price within two years.
And with regard to inflation and the Fed, he said:
- “I don’t think inflation is going back below 2% anytime soon, but I think we’ve got probably one more quarter of nasty inflation numbers, but as the supply chain resets itself and the U.S. economy in particular… starts to normalize, you’ll see those inflation numbers come down.“
- “The Fed and Jerome Powell already indicated this week he’s calling for a 25 basis point increase this month. I think that’s a scant increase.“
- “The big issue for everybody is the dollar volume that’s in the system right now. Remember, we’ve got a $9 trillion federal reserve balance sheet since April 1st of 2020… It’s an astronomical increase in the amount of money that’s in circulation in the economy. And that’s one of the main reasons why we’ve got the inflation coupled with the supply chain disruption. S, he’s going have to start taking that money out of the market. He was doing that successfully in 2017-18 into 2019. The market did correct as a result of that… The market is pricing this stuff in.”
- “I think JP Morgan, or one of the big banks, said it’s going to be seven or eight rate increases. That’s only a 2% increase… My prediction is going to be less than that. I think the overnight rate by the end of the year will be probably be 1.25% percent. I don’t think it gets to 2%.“
DISCLAIMER
The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.