CoinDesk's Jennifer Sanasie interviewed SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci for CoinDesk TV's "Spotlight Series." Here is the full transcript of the interview.
Jennifer Sanasie: Hey, what's going on everyone? This is CoinDesk's Spotlight Series. Our next guest needs no introduction. Former White House communications director and SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci joins me now. Welcome to the show.
Anthony Scaramucci: Jen, good to be on with you. Thank you for including me.
Jennifer Sanasie: It's wonderful to see you again. And I have to ask you, do you hate that after only working in the White House for 11 days, you will forever be introduced as the former White House Communications Director?
Anthony Scaramucci: I've been called so much worse than that in my life, Jen. Mean, are you kidding me? It's fine. I mean, it's part of my life. I think you'll find somebody like me, I don't run from any aspect of my life. I own my mistakes. I'm trying to do better today than I did yesterday. And that was seven years ago, hard to believe. But again, listen, I got fired for a reason. I mishandled a few things in the White House. The president fired me. He had the right to do that. And we move on. I think it's a lesson for people.
Don't hang on things and if that's part of my legacy, so be it.
Jennifer Sanasie: You talk about that a lot in your book and it's really interesting because I think in today's day and age with social media, there's almost this, like, anxiety across everyone I talk to. People don't want to get canceled. They don't want to screw up in public because they think it's going to, you know, be a part of who you are forever. And I think you've maneuvered that pretty well. Does that, like, anxiety, that almost trauma of these events that have been very public come back to you? Or, like, how have you worked through that? Because that's a big feat.
Anthony Scaramucci: Well, I just wrote a book about this sort of stuff from Wall Street to the White House and back. I basically write in the book that if you're having a bad day, unless it's a health reason, it really can't be much worse than the day I had on the 31st of July 2017, where I was blown through the front door of the White House, excoriated by all the media, cable news pundits, late-night comedians. It was a rough go. I mean, you know, they were impersonating me on Saturday Night Live. And so you can take your mindset and you can decide which way you want to go. You can play a victim and say, what was me, or you can laugh about it and ride with it. And that's your mindset. You've got to make a decision about that. And, I've lived by and not always and not perfectly, but I have lived by what my grandmother used to say to us as kids. What other people think of you is none of your business. I remember coming home in the second or third grade complaining to her that there were boys in the cafeteria that were being mean to me. And I remember her scoffing at me, saying that I was absolutely ridiculous and wear big boy pants and don't listen to or ignore all that. And nothing is more true in the fishbowl of social media that we live in or negative articles that could be written about you. I will say this though, when we're doing well at SkyBridge, we don't get a lot of positive articles written about us. You know, there's an expression in the news media, when it bleeds, it leads. And so people like the train crash. I know President Biden is experiencing this right now. Would be a more interesting media story if he departed from the race as opposed to stay in it, you know, and so we are doing this to each other now. You have to make a decision either to ignore it and keep writing or let it absorb your thinking. I mean, one of the reasons why we're having so much stress psychologically in our society, even the Surgeon General is saying this now, is that we have a tendency to read the comments that others say about us on social media. And I would tell people, ignore that stuff. It has no relevance to you.
Jennifer Sanasie: I think that's great advice. I sometimes read the comments and it doesn't do good things. I gotta just stop doing that.
Anthony Scaramucci: Well, yeah, well, you know, know, you know, Kelly Anne Conway, the first day when I joined the White House, pretty good day. Did a press conference. I was upstairs in the second floor of the West Wing and Kelly Anne Conway took my phone from me, and she shut off all my notifications. And she says, don't even look at these things, just do your job. And I kept, you know, I mean, that was one of the bright spots from the White House. My first day was pretty good, my last day was pretty bad, but I have left my notifications off for the last seven years.
Jennifer Sanasie: Really smart. think I'm going to adopt that strategy. You know, the last time we spoke, I was a little tough on you. It was after the FTX fallout. That was another media frenzy that you had to go through. I know you were very close with Sam Bankman-Fried. There were business deals between the two of you. You publicly spoke about that relationship. When you look back at that now and you look at what the industry has done since then, I know you've answered this question before, but I think it's pertinent to revisit it. What lessons have you learned from that time and how have you embedded that into how you operate today and, more specifically, as you're running SkyBridge and looking more at crypto?
Anthony Scaramucci: I think it's a great question. I think that question, the answer to that question has evolved since you and I were talking about it. You know, when you were, and by the way, you were doing your job, which I respect. It was a tough situation. Think one of the things I like to do in tough situations is face the music. I just want you to imagine me reporting that I am now a hero on CNBC. Sam, who's a brilliant guy. He's the Mark Zuckerberg of crypto. He's bought 30% of my business. We're to have this generational transfer of knowledge and we're going go out and help him grow his business, grow our business, et cetera. Such great excitement. Nine short weeks later, I'm back on television having to tell people, unfortunately, I sold my business to somebody that we didn't know it at the time, but he was guilty of fraud. Mean, he was convicted of fraud and he's serving in jail cells. In a jail cell is a very, very painful experience. So I went from hero to zero in a nine week period of time. And it was a terrible situation for me. But I do think one, you have to face the music, you have to tell people what happened, how it happened, why you were involved with it. Number two, I think you have to live your life with integrity because I believe if you live your life with integrity, there's always opportunity for you. I can't tell you the number of positive things that happened to me after that debacle. And so when I sit here and reflect upon it now, I guess the good news is it looks like the investors are going to get their money back. Now, a lot of those investors, you're a crypto journalist, so you know a lot of those investors are sore. Why are they sore? They're sore because they owned a bitcoin or they own two bitcoin. It got dollarized at $17,000 a coin. Those coins went to $60,000. So they should technically have $120,000, but they don't. They have $34,000. But I think, life being what it is, we adjust our expectations. And I think people are gonna be happy that they got that money back because back in November of 2022, they were probably thinking, man, I'm probably not gonna get much money back. And so that's number one. So stay in things. Don't get yourself overly disillusioned. And I think the other thing, the other big lesson, of all this is there was lots of fraud in the industry, lots of overleverage in the industry. Know, people in the industry don't like Gary Gensler. I attended an event yesterday in Washington, D .C. with a number of legislators and Anita Dunn from the White House talking about why we in the industry need bipartisan positive crypto legislation. We shouldn't let one party hijack it versus the other. And, you, Mark Cuban, and he said, I could say this, I'll say it, Mark Cuban said: Just make sure if you leave this room and people are going to report about what happened in this room, make sure people know that I'm on record saying that I want Gary Gensler to be fired. And I said, OK, I'll make sure I share that with people, particularly people like Jenn at CoinDesk. The point about, yeah, yeah, well, I'll ask him to, but you know, the point that I'm making here is that weirdly Gary helped the industry.
Jennifer Sanasie: You gotta tell Mark to come on and share that with me.
Anthony Scaramucci: I'm going to explain why he ... he more or less broke the law by not approving the bitcoin ETF. There's an administrative law that says you can't be arbitrary and capricious. And of course, the futures ETF was approved. And so it would have made sense that, you know, you can't be arbitrary in the administration of law. The cash ETF should have been approved shortly thereafter. He delayed it. He lost the lawsuit as a result of that. But that delay, that 12-ish month delay, the bottom fell out on the industry. All the fraud got exposed. All the overleverage in the industry got exposed. And I think it's a sturdier industry today. And I think those prices for bitcoin are actually less levered, more sturdy. And of course, we have these ETFs that have gained a tremendous amount of cash inflows since they started in January. Three lessons, number one, something bad happens, get out there early, talk to people like Jenn at CoinDesk or go on the air, explain it. Number two, live your life with integrity. I didn't do anything wrong in that situation. I spent four and a half hours with the Department of Justice. They had no problem with anything that I did. And life goes on. And then the third thing is if you're in something and you believe it, stay in it. We have been remarkably rewarded at SkyBridge by doing.
Jennifer Sanasie: I want to get back to the political conversation in just a second, but I have to ask you on the topic of FTX, do you still talk to Sam or his family at all?
Anthony Scaramucci: It's been a while. I haven't talked to Sam. I know that my friend Bill Cohen went to go visit him in prison. I think it'd be tough for me to do that because of the fraud that was perpetrated against me and my clients. I do feel bad for Sam. I have a, I know this, shouldn't be saying this, maybe because I got raised Catholic. I have a soft spot for Sam. While I'm sore at him for what happened, I have forgiven him and I've moved on. And I a politician at some point in the future commutes that sentence. I don't want to see him be in jail for 25 years. People will more or less get their money back. He's got some issues, mental health-related issues. And I hope, I hope, that there's, you know, some level of rehabilitation for Sam in the.
Jennifer Sanasie: I think there are people who had a really bad experience, I guess you could say during the FTX's debacle, people are likely going to get paid back, like you said, now. But I think that there are people who went through that experience and feel like, you know, Sam was sentenced, it was a fair sentence, he shouldn't get out. What would you say to those people?
Anthony Scaramucci: I understand those people. Would say this is why democracies and varying thoughts are so fascinating. You have to work through these and good democracies are good debate. You're partially displeased and you're partially pleased. I guess what I would say to those people, they're right. And if that's where things go, then that's it. He'll serve his, typically in a situation like that, you serve of the 25 years if you've had good behavior in prison. And so then you'll end up serving 20 of the 25 years. And they're right and there really is no point of debate. Guess I have found in life that our ability to pardon people, our ability to forgive people is a benefit to us as opposed to not only just them, but as a benefit to us. When I was a kid, the Pope was shot. Before your time, but in 1981, he was shot in St. Peter's Square. Was almost mortally wounded. He survived the gunshot wound. They performed emergency surgery on him. And I guess it was a short time thereafter, when he felt up to it, he went to the prison and forgave the man that shot him. And a lot of people said, OK, well, that's above the call of duty of a human being, but it was a sign of his Christianity and a sign of the teachings of the religion that he was in. So I got raised Catholic, and I think about things like that. So that's me. Other people are in another direction. We could have the debate. If I lost that debate, what those people are saying is fair, and I would accept.
Jennifer Sanasie: OK, I think that's fair. I want to talk about your former boss now, Donald Trump. We learned that he's going to be speaking at a Bitcoin conference later this month. He's become this crypto-forward candidate. And I want to hear your real thoughts here. You know the guy, you worked for him. Is he being opportunistic? Is there authenticity in what he's saying?
Anthony Scaramucci: OK, yep. You know, you know what? I don't think it matters, you know, whether he's being opportunistic or transactional, which he is those things. I mean, as evidenced by his entire career, I don't think it matters. I think it's been incredibly good for crypto. I think this has been political malpractice on the part of the Democrats. For some reason, they ceded the crypto regulation to Elizabeth Warren and to Gary Gensler. It's been an unbelievable disaster for them. It's President Trump's election to lose now. President Biden has a decent record. He's reshorts and manufacturing. He's built up a microprocessor foundry in United States. He got infrastructure bill done. There's a lot of different things that he did that were beneficial to the country, helped the country heal post Covid. But they've really lost the plot on a lot of different things. If you can't put sentences together at a debate, if you can't as the president of United States without a teleprompter, and you can't free form as you and I are doing in this conversation, I think it's a big negative. Think you're trying to tell people, don't believe your lying eyes. This person is totally together and totally with it. And then let's put them up on stage at age 81 and you see him doddering. Feel, I feel actually bad for him. I guess what I would say to President Biden, there are graveyards filled with – Charles Seagal once said this – are graveyards filled with men that once thought they were indispensable. They would have been better off ceding to a new generation of Democratic leaders. And then Biden could have rode off in the sunset with a pretty good record. So now they're faced with this very rough decision to make 120 days out from the election. As it relates to Mr. Trump, I am happy that he's pro-crypto. I think if anything, he's pushed the conversation and forced the Democrats to be more open to ... and maybe we'll get rid of the Genslers and the Warrens, who have been a disaster for the industry. And I think it's been a disaster as public servants. So, you know, whatever my personal issues are with Mr. Trump – and I certainly won't be voting for him – I'm among the 40 or so people who work for him that see the danger of him, including the former vice president of the United States that was on the ballot with him. I, I often say to people, you got 40 people that worked at a pharmaceutical company. They were inside the doors of the pharmaceutical company and they came out and said, hey, the pill that you're about to take is going to kill you or members of your family. I don't know. Most people probably wouldn't take the pill. Or let's say we all worked at the automotive company. See the car that we just manufactured is going to blow up. I don't know. For some reason in politics, I have trumped arrangements in. I mean, somebody called me a never Trumper, Jenn. I laughed. Said, well, first of all, I was once a Trumper. So you definitionally, I'm not a never Trumper. If you want to say I have Trump derangement syndrome, that's fine. But I see myself as having Trump reality syndrome. I see the man for what he is. I see the lack of intellectual curiosity. I see the danger to the democracy. I see these think tanks that are working alongside of him that want to build his transition into the first few years of his presidency as a dystopian. And I'm not a one-issue voter. Now, there are one-issue voters, and I think the Democrats have made a horrific mistake here. They could have been neutral on crypto or positive on crypto. And I think it would have helped them in the election. But if they lose the election, and it's now President Trump's election to lose. But if the Democrats lose the election and they go through the autopsy, one of the things would be, wow, we really mishandled our cryptocurrency and digital asset strategy and ...
Jennifer Sanasie: Well, I, I would love to hear from you. What do you think it actually means? Polymarket has Trump at a 62 % chance of winning the election. If Trump actually wins the election, do we really see any change in the U.S. when it comes to the furthering of crypto legislation and crypto regulation? Or is that something that still drags?
Anthony Scaramucci: Well, I think so. No, think him and his team will promote a ... they'll put a pro-SEC, pro-crypto, pro-digital asset SEC commissioner in place. This whole discussion about what is the security and what's a token and all this stuff will go by the wayside. You know, the markets will have a pro-crypto friendly administration. It's no sweat off of Mr. Trump or any of the people working for to help this industry. This is a big mistake. Know, the Democrats, guess, the Libs and Warren things, let me block the industry here in the U.S. OK, well, the industry is going to grow around you and you're going to lose intellectual capital and capital capital. Well, there are bad actors in the industry. OK, there are, there are bad actors in this industry as there are in pharmaceutical, medicine, lawyers. ... There are bad actors on the planet. So you pick the subject or the profession. There are bad actors engaging in those subjects and profession. The job would have been better served if we got together as a group of people and said: "Here's what bad actors do. Here's how we could regulate propitiously to prevent bad actions and protect investors." But they don't do that. They're trying to regulate by enforcement. There's no guidelines anywhere. Everybody knows this. And so if we stop doing that, it'll be better for the country and the industry. And if we don't stop doing that, guys like President Trump will get elected because there's 50 million or so people that own crypto. They don't, they don't like this nonsense. And a lot of those people could be one-issue voters.
Jennifer Sanasie: Do you think that Biden should be the Democratic candidate?
Anthony Scaramucci: So I've been public on that. I said he should not be. think that, I think it's prima facie that he should not be. And I hope he steps down and I hope they pick a younger, more fresher candidate. If they decide not to do that, I will be with President Biden. I'll try to help him win. And that's it. Because I see President Trump as a danger. If Trump wins, it is what it is. I'm American. I love my country. Dissent is a positive force in the United States.
Jennifer Sanasie: And talk to me about this scenario. If Biden is not the Democratic candidate, it's someone else. What does that mean for crypto, in your opinion?
Anthony Scaramucci: I would be positive. We've to get rid of Elizabeth Warren and Gary Gensler. I think that would give them the opportunity to reset things. I think they would get, you know, remember, Biden's got a lot of acolytes in the White House with him that are directing policy. And I think a new person come in and say, "hey, don't know those people don't care. Let's start."
Jennifer Sanasie: Have you been following the Polifi tokens at all?
Anthony Scaramucci: I haven't, no, not that familiar.
Jennifer Sanasie: They're, well, meme coins that are people making bets on Trump and Biden. There's like, it's just silly. I was curious if you were following that.
Anthony Scaramucci: Yeah, no, I haven't, haven't followed that. So maybe I'm getting old. I don't know. That's not something I would follow.
Jennifer Sanasie: Yeah, you don't have to. It is a little silly. I know on a more serious token that you have $100,000 bitcoin prediction by the end of the year. For you, what needs to happen to get.
Anthony Scaramucci: Well, I think we got to get through the FTX situation and, you know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I meant to say the Mt. Gox situation because I want to bring up FTX in a second because they're conjoined. If we get through the Mt. Gox situation, the bitcoins or and I'm going to be a recipient of some of those and I'm not selling mine. If we get those and the marketplace digest those, concomitant to that is the FTX situation. Let me tell you what that is. There's 16 or so billion dollars of cash.
Jennifer Sanasie: We're not through it yet. OK.
Anthony Scaramucci: That's going to be unleashed by the bankruptcy estate into the account holders of FTX. Now, some of those people, as we pointed out, are sore. They feel that they are owed more than that because their bitcoins or tokens went up. But, you know, getting that cash, $16 billion, could five or 10 billion of that reenter cryptocurrencies? It's possible. And that could also create some buying pressure in the marketplace. But I think just in general, the selling cycle has started on Wall Street. And I do believe that model portfolios will have one, two, three, four percent bitcoin over the next three, four, five years. There's less supply of bitcoin and it will push the prices.
Jennifer Sanasie: All right, Anthony, we are running low on time. And just before we go, I do have to ask you: there was an article published in Bloomberg today. It says that you barred clients from exiting SkyBridge Capital's crypto-focused hedge fund. Talk to me about what's going on there.
Anthony Scaramucci: So I actually didn't read the article. I know this is an article from Kathy Burton who wrote my financial obituary last May. She basically said we were going out of business and our performance was terrible. And there were some truth in the article from last May. We did have bad performance. I didn't like the fact that, you know, she sat for an interview with me for three hours. Didn't, I mean, she offered no counterdote to her obituary to Skybridge is a low and behold, and I hope this is in the article, we've had very very good performance amount allowed to talk about it but hopefully it's in the article and then Kathy's trying to say that I'm blocking people from leaving, but that's not what happened. What, what happened was people bought our fund we have a prospectus a prospectus allows us to set the redemptions we have redemptions every six months in our fund and we can set them from five to 25%. They're set at five right now because some of the wirehouses at the bottom put cells on our fund. Those wirehouses know that we have private capital in the fund alongside of the liquid capital, and we can't have a rush to the exits of their clients at the detriment of the other clients that are in there. So we have an external board, independent board that sets those redemptions. And so there are some people that are sore at us for living inside of the prospectus and setting the redemptions at 5%. They can still get out and they are getting out the ones that want to. But it does protect the integrity of the portfolio. And as a fiduciary, I would ask people to please look at what our performance is. You can figure it out. I can't talk about it, but it's very, very good. And it's very, very good for that reason. If we had let the world turn in a way that was outside of our control, it would have detrimented the clients that wanted to stay with us. And those clients signed a prospectus. They signed an agreement with us and we are letting them out. We're just letting them out not as quickly as some would like. And they're complaining to Kathy Burton and she doesn't like me for some reason. That's fine. We, you and I spent the first part of this podcast talking about how you have to deal with that in life and not take it too personally. I would imagine if we're up 40 % this year, which is quite possible, she'll probably write another article. Maybe it'll be another negative article. I don't know. But it's something that I can live with. And I've had this conversation with many of our clients. And I would tell people, read the prospectuses of the things that you are investing in very carefully. And SkyBridge is operating inside of the guidelines of that, and we are delivering great performance for our clients. And believe it or not, we're raising money again away from the people that are complaining.
Jennifer Sanasie: As a quick follow up to that, know, maybe talk to me a little bit about some of the factors that first led to the curtailing of redemption in 2022 and how they have or haven't changed now. Just trying to make sense of the article here because I don't want to discredit her.
Anthony Scaramucci: No, when you have a 15-year relationship with the wirehouses and the wirehouses, you have one bad quarter and the wirehouses say, "OK, we're done. We want all of our clients out immediately. We're extinguishing our 15-year relationship with you and you can no longer market to our clients. And we want every one of our clients to redeem immediately," which is what they try to do to these funds. This is why many of my friends in the hedge fund industry are like "Anthony, you made a terrible mistake having wirehouses distribute your product because they're very whimsical about when they pull the plug." And these wirehouses pull the plug at the bottom, Jenn, you know, we're up a lot of percent. I'm not allowed to get into the details, but go take a look. These wirehouses sold us here and we are not there anymore. We're way over here. And so we have to defend the portfolio. That's our fiduciary responsibility. And so really nothing has changed. The major thing, people will get out. They'll get out on a timely way. A lot of people. There are also a ton of people – sure Kathy did interview these people – but there are tons of those I think I'd you did that because my clients want to stay in and there's pressure on me to get them out and you allowed me to show my clients that you guys are actually doing a great job. So there's another group of people that have said that so really nothing has changed. I love, I love the attention though. I have to be honest about that. So hopefully she'll write another article, you'll invite me on and we'll talk about it again.
Jennifer Sanasie: That is something we have learned about you, Anthony, is that you don't shy away from the attention.
Anthony Scaramucci: Yeah, it's no problem. Tell Kathy I say hello. If I dated her in high school and I hurt her feelings or something like that, tell her I'm sorry about it. Didn't mean to do
Jennifer Sanasie: We gotta wrap it there, Anthony. Thank you very much for joining us on this episode of Coin Desk Spotlight, and I'm sure we'll talk to you soon.
Anthony Scaramucci: Great to be on with you. Have a great weekend.