Skybridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci believes the blockchain industry has a very bright future, but he is concerned about the “very weak leadership” in American politics.
Scaramucci is a former Director of Communications at the White House and Skybridge Capital manages the $7 billion Skybridge Bitcoin Fund.
He spoke candidly at the Australian Financial Review Crypto Summit held in Australia today about the current and future states of crypto and politics in the U.S. He said that although blockchain tech “seems clunky right now,” he sees a glittering future for the industry.
However, he feels that the biggest hurdle that could stand in the way of the industry’s growth are the “absolutely despicable” politicians among American leadership. Scaramucci succinctly stated that “we should be very worried” if some of the current front-runners become the next President.
He took particular aim at Republican Senator Ted Cruz, whom he referred to as “the apotheosis of hypocrisy” for what Scaramucci feels is his tendency to speak negatively in private about issues or people such as Trump, but then speak positively about them in public. The industry will not doubt hope this trait doesn’t apply to Cruz’s views on cryptocurrency.
Senator Cruz is a very public crypto proponent and introduced legislation on Mar. 30 which would prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) to individuals.
Despite his concerns about politicians, Scaramucci believes the classification of cryptocurrency as property by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) “makes it almost impossible to extinguish it in the United States.” Furthermore, he sees President Biden’s latest Executive Order as “fairly optimistic.”
“I predict that we’ve already met the crossover moment where Bitcoin is going to be fairly regulated and other cryptocurrencies will be fairly regulated here in the U.S. for all of those reasons.”
Scaramucci compared these early days in the blockchain space to the early days of the internet where webpages took 30 seconds to load.
“Just imagine where we could be in five years, where virtually everyone in the Western world will have a smartphone wallet on their smartphone and they’ll likely be able to transact with every restaurant in the world.”
His long-term optimism for the future of the industry and for a $500,000 BTC price high point is tempered by short-term hurdles such as the lack of a spot Bitcoin ETF, “lingering aspects of Covid, varying supply chain disruptions,” and the war in Ukraine.
Skybridge attempted to launch a spot Bitcoin ETF, but was rejected by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in January.
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He brushed off ancient TradFi critics Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger by simply stating that “Bitcoin doesn’t care” how they feel about it. In February, Munger likened Bitcoin to “venereal disease” at a shareholder’s session, which Scaramucci responded to by saying:
“Charlie Munger says (Bitcoin’s) the worst thing that’s ever happened in this civilization, even though we’ve had atom bombs go off, we’ve had pandemics and global wars and genocides.”