SkyBridge’s Scaramucci on ‘radioactive’ memecoins and why we should follow Larry Fink

Anthony Scaramucci’s fund Skybridge Capital holds some Bitcoin, Solana, and Ethereum.

But he won’t touch memecoins — even though they’ve achieved 1,000% returns amid a frenzy that some say is ruining crypto.

“I’m already in trouble with my clients for buying Bitcoin,” Scaramucci told the Digital Assets Forum conference in London on Monday.

Scaramucci’s comments show that while crypto has achieved institutional recognition — accelerated by the success of Bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds — most investors still approach crypto conservatively.

‘They hate you guys’

The American financier told the audience — who came from institutions that trade or support trading in digital assets — that while they think about crypto all day, “the rest of the world is not thinking about it ever.”

And traditional finance leaders like JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and politicians like Senator Elizabeth Warren — whom he called “the Wicked Witch of Massachusetts” — still have a negative opinion about digital assets, he added.

“When you’re thinking about building a portfolio … you stick to Bitcoin, Ethereum or Solana, because you’re just trying to break the ice with the rest of the world,” Scaramucci said.

“I live in a world of 60-year-old mostly white males and they hate you guys. They hate me for sure, but they also hate you guys — because they’ve missed it.”

‘I live in a world of 60-year-old mostly white males and they hate you guys.’

—  Anthony Scaramucci, SkyBridge Capital

Scaramucci said he decided to buy crypto for his fund in 2020.

“And when I bought Bitcoin in October 2020, my clients went nuts on me because they’re mostly institutions or high net worth individuals,” he said.

“But then at the end of 2021, I was getting calls from clients saying I was a genius for buying Bitcoin — and it was those very same clients that had called me at the end of 2020 to tell me I was an imbecile.”

Scaramucci — who opened the panel with an anecdote of how then-President Trump fired him from his job as White House communications director after 10 days on the job in 2017 — has a reputation for profanity and bombast.

But his investment strategy appears relatively cautious. During the panel, he invoked Microstrategy founder Michael Saylor, whose strategy is “buy and hodl at — almost — all costs.”

Cryptocurrencies are long-term assets whose value is scaling, Scaramucci said.

“If you think about it in terms of web1, we’re in 1998, 1999. Just imagine what the next 20 years will be in terms of exponential growth.”

‘Follow Fink’

Scaramucci concluded with some advice for the audience — “Follow Larry Fink.”

He said he had run into the BlackRock CEO in the lobby of a hotel in 2022, when Fink told him that he hated Bitcoin.

“And then a year later, he filed an ETF application for Bitcoin,” Scaramucci said.

Fink’s bet paid off, as BlackRock’s ETF was approved — along with a handful of others — in January.

Fink is now touting “tokenisation for every financial asset. And possibly every hard and soft asset is going to be tokenised,” Scaramucci concluded.

Reach out to the author at joanna@dlnews.com.