WBD295 Audio Transcription
SkyBridge Capital’s Bitcoin Fund with Anthony Scaramucci
Interview date: Monday 4th January
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Anthony Scaramucci. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.
In this interview, I talk to SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci. We discuss the SkyBridge Bitcoin fund, institutional interest, and 11-day stint working for President Trump.
“You can be volatile and still march upwards, and I predict Bitcoin may do both of those things, but maybe it won’t, it could glide to $280k a coin...I think it’s got a long way to go here.”
— Anthony Scaramucci
Interview Transcription
Peter McCormack: Right, Anthony, how are you, man?
Anthony Scaramucci: I'm doing great. I'm sorry for all those technical difficulties. You're looking good.
Peter McCormack: Thank you, man.
Anthony Scaramucci: I'm loving the hat; I can tell you love America by the look of you!
Peter McCormack: I love America. If I could live there, I'd be there. I used to go every month before this COVID stuff. I'd always be in New York or LA or San Fran, and I haven't been since like, I think, February was the last time; it sucks.
Anthony Scaramucci: Yeah, it sucks. I mean, the last time I was in the UK was in February.
Peter McCormack: God damn. Well listen, look, we've got a lot to get through. SkyBridge is going big on Bitcoin; we need to talk about this. So, listen, the people that listen to my show, they're not always the people who are the most technical or the most economically minded; we try and keep it simple and easy. But, tell people about who SkyBridge are and why this is such a big deal?
Anthony Scaramucci: So, SkyBridge is a $7.5 billion asset manager based in New York. It was founded by me in March of 2005, so it's about to celebrate its 16th anniversary. We have 60 employees globally. We have an office in Abu Dhabi, we have one in Florida and we have a New York office. So basically, we are a hedge fund manager for the mass affluent.
So, our idea in the beginning was to democratise the hedge fund space, so if you were a high net worth individual, you had $50,000 or $100,000 that you wanted to invest in a hedge fund, you could come to SkyBridge and SkyBridge would give you the best and brightest portfolio; and if you wanted to get into Steve Cohen's fund, he's got a $25 million minimum but with your $50,000 aggregated with the rest of our people, you could get into Steve Cohen's fund, you know; we have over $300 million with Steve.
So, we have 26,000 clients, we have a phenomenal track record. We got our arses kicked in 2008; we were down 19%, but we went up 60% from that bottom. And, we got our arses kicked once again in March 2020, which was our most difficult month. But what's interesting, Peter, is that it won't be our worst year, because we've rallied back strongly. We'll probably be down 7% on the year for our core fund, but if you looked at our three-, five- and ten-year record, it's a pretty amazing record. And I predict, like what happened in 2008, we're going to be off to the races in our core fund over the next three years.
But, when I got back to SkyBridge -- so I've been doing this for 33 years, less my disastrous 11 days in Washington working for the Orange Maniac.
Peter McCormack: I was going to ask you about that!
Anthony Scaramucci: Yeah, well I mean I'm happy to talk about it. So, I worked for the Orange Maniac for about 11 days in Washington. I worked on his campaign for a little over a year; I was on his Inaugural Committee; his Transition Committee; and, I was actually very helpful to him. But, I like teasing him now and his buddies and say, "Hey, you sons of bitches, you couldn't win without me", because I was beating the shit out of them for 18 months.
But, less that fiasco in Washington, I have been doing this for 33 years. So, when I got back to SkyBridge, I said, "Hey, we need diversity in our product line". 2018, we launched a SkyBridge Opportunity Zone fund, which took advantage of the tax code, and we're investing in these poorer areas of the United States. And, if you do that for long periods of time, you can get no capital gains on your returns.
So, the second wave was in the digital asset space. So, if you had this interview with me a year ago, I would have told you, "We're looking at Bitcoin, we're looking at Ethereum, we're looking at other digital assets". I don't know if you know Anthony Pompliano --
Peter McCormack: I know him.
Anthony Scaramucci: -- but about a year ago, I did his podcast and I gave him a history of money, 5,000 year history of money, and I explained why I believed digital assets are here to stay. And Bitcoin, even though it got slammed 2017 into 2018, started its rebirth a little bit into 2019, I said, "That will likely be the industry leader. And, once I'm confident that it is the industry leader, I want to get my clients up to speed and up and running on that". So, three things happened and I'll talk quickly.
One, it started to get to the crossover mark. What is the crossover mark; several hundred billion dollars in capitalisation. To me, once you're there, you almost become impregnable. It's like, "How are you going to attack Google now; it's at $1 trillion. How are you going to attack Amazon; they've eaten everybody's lunch in retail internet, 47%, 48% market share. And so, as a result of which, Bitcoin has done that.
Secondarily, Bitcoin has been attacked 6,500 times by 6,500 different currency initiatives and it's ruled the roost. So, that is another very big positive. I like the scarcity feature; no one knows who invented it. I think that was smart by the inventors of it, but they've only got 21 million coins out there; so, that scarcity provides people with this anti-dilutive quality. And it's also, as you know, about human minds; when something is scarce, people want it.
And the last thing, which is a combination of two things, it is definitely a ledger. And all currency really is, as you know because you study this stuff, is a ledger. It's an asset liability mixture between you and me. I come and mow your lawn or do your landscaping around your beautiful house, you give me dollars or British pounds, I put them in my pocket, I can use those to buy something with. But, it's a piece of paper. These currencies now are fiat currencies; they're not backed by stores of value any more. Perhaps someday, some of them will be backed by Bitcoin; it will be interesting to see what happens.
But, where we are right now is, because of what's going on in our social contract, the destruction of the financial services industry, 2008, the healthcare COVID-19 crisis, we are proliferating fiat currencies. We have a 25% increase in the monetary supply of the United States in six short months, which is an enormous amount of money chasing these objects, and you're seeing Bitcoin lift off.
So, you've got two things going on: transferability of value; the blockchain is allowing for that to be impregnable. And then, the second and last piece of the third thing is Fidelity and places like that, one of the largest asset managers of the world, is offering cold storage of Bitcoin. So now, I hit the trigger about three months ago, we began our filing processes with the SEC. We opened the fund on 22 December; last week, actually, at this time, put $25 million of the firm's capital in the fund; and then, we go live, turnkey on 4 January, where we'll be able to offer this to investors.
So, for me, I grew up in a blue-collar neighbourhood, you can probably tell by the way I'm dressed, I actually don't give a shit; but, I'm a guy that believes that you have to democratise these things. So, we have a $50,000 minimum, easy access. It's a three-month lockup because of the regulatory environment in the US; you have to structure it in a limited partnership vehicle, which we did, and we're off to the races.
Now, as you would imagine, it's hot right now; some people think it's in a bubble, some people think there's a correction coming; other people think it's going to $500,000. I'm probably in between. I don't see why we couldn't have a correction, but I would point out to all of your listeners, this is a network now, and Amazon is a network.
By the way, Amazon has dropped in value 50% six times since it went public in 1997, so you can be volatile and still march upwards, and I predict Bitcoin may do both of those things, but maybe it won't. It could glide to $280,000 a coin, have a $5 trillion market valuation, and still only be half of all of the gold that's been mined in our global society, and I think it's got a long way to go here.
Peter McCormack: All right. Well listen, look, I'm glad you did Pomp's show first. It's good to do a warmup before you come on the bigger and better show!
Anthony Scaramucci: Absolutely. I remember I was doing Pomp's show before I had a product.
Peter McCormack: Well, you know, Pomp knows that my show's better as well. If you asked him, he'd be like, "Yeah, come on Pete's; it's a better show for Bitcoin!" So listen, all right, look, this is super interesting. Let me ask you, did you have your times where you doubted Bitcoin, where you looked at it and you're like, "No, this is bullshit?"
Anthony Scaramucci: Yes.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, you did. So, what flipped the switch for you, because that's going to be the thing? For your investors, the people, there's probably also a little bit like, "What?" and now you're in it, they've got the confidence from you.
Anthony Scaramucci: Well, listen, I'm a doubter, I'm a sceptic. I'm always in the belief in the asset management business that you are guilty until proven innocent. It's not a British or an American court, there's no presumption of innocence, and so I actually met with a group of people in Silicon Valley to discuss Bitcoin in 2014; and, while I found it interesting, I wasn't comfortable with it.
So, why wasn't I comfortable with it at the time? It was trading at $400 a coin, it was hard to buy, people were buying it and storing it on a USB. It was Coinbase and these other things were just sort of getting started; there was a lot of uncertainty and potential hackings of those coins. And then, you had a lot of aggressive competition, Peter.
So my attitude was, okay, I like the idea, I understand where it's going, I understand the technological applicability of the blockchain and why it's impregnable, but I was not ready to commit capital because I thought there were still a lot of downsides because it wasn't Amazon, you know. By the way, I'm the guy that misses the Amazon IPO and invests in Amazon in 2002, after it's had two down cycles. But, I'm looking at its market share and its market share is continuing to expand. And if you have the right management team, and I'm a big user of their product, then you know what, it's now acceptable and that stock's got a way to go.
I think Bitcoin is Amazon 2001 or 2002. It's out there, it's a winner, but it's still in the very, very early stages of it. And by the way, if you looked at Amazon's stock chart 1997 to 2002, you were like, "Oh, jeez, I missed this". The thing went from a fraction of a share to a gigantic amount of market capitalisation. So, people would look at it; well, it was trading at $400 when you first looked at it; now it's at $27,000, you're an idiot, you're coming in in the late innings.
My response to that is, "No". If anything, we're still in the very early innings and the reason why is it's still not fully accepted, it's still harder to buy than you would like it to, it's not a stock or an ETF, it's not properly regulated yet in the United States; there a lot of things that have to happen here and I like where we are. And, I think we've got to that crossover point where I'm comfortable with my money and my investors' money in it.
And, I'll say something to you: Amazon's not going to zero. Now, I could say that and then of course, tomorrow it will go to zero, there'll be a nuclear strike or something like that. But, you get my point.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I get it.
Anthony Scaramucci: It's a proven thing now. Worst comes to worst, we'll be able to sell the warehouses and we'll get a penny on the stock. Bitcoin, I believe, is not going to zero. I believe that the neural network of Bitcoin, the tens of millions of people that are operating on that network, have accepted it as a ledger.
I have adult children now, I'm getting up there, and my millennium children see Bitcoin comparable to gold. If anything, they see it as more portable as gold, they see it as more reliable than gold, easier to store than gold and, let me put this to you because this is something I would have said to myself: there's no army supporting Bitcoin, there are no natural resources of the country supporting Bitcoin --
Peter McCormack: There is an army.
Anthony Scaramucci: Yes, there is, I'm going to get there in a second. But, my point being, there isn't an army like the US army or the continental -- you pick the army, you know what I mean. And, I got that wrong when I originally assessed it from a currency perspective and the history of currency, because to your point that you were about to make, there is an army. There's this node network. SkyBridge is operating a full node inside of our service form inside of SkyBridge now, and there are millions of people that are supporting the network and protecting the network and constantly improving the encryption reliability of the network.
So, in some ways, this is the classic libertarian ideal where the currency is actually not being protected by a government, but it's being protected by individuals. And since, you know, we broke from the United Kingdom 244 years ago, sometimes individuals can be more powerful than an organised army.
Peter McCormack: Do you worry at all about, like you say, Amazon won't go to zero and I get that. Investors of STARK is a pretty accepted thing, but Bitcoin's still new, people like shithead Mnuchins have always got an issue with it. Do you ever worry that, a few years down the line, you've put a bunch of money in, a bunch of your clients have put money in, and then the government really try to fuck with it and it just destroys its value?
Anthony Scaramucci: Yes, but I think it's past time for that. Look at what happened with Ripple and some of this other stuff. Ripple's different. The founders were known; they were creating more volume of Ripple. You and I know that whoever Satoshi is, or the group that created Bitcoin, were very wise to cap it at 21 million, and you know and I know that that's procedurally impossible to create more coin and so therefore, you've got this finite supply and it's been accepted. It's transferring among people and whether the governments try to crack down on it or not, it's going to go on one way or another.
Governments tried to crack down on the black markets in the Soviet Union and other places in the world, and they continue to proliferate, and I think you're beyond critical mass with Bitcoin. And, it will be regulated and there could be some onerousness to the regulation in the United States, because they're worried about Bitcoin supplanting the supremacy of the US dollar, and that could cause a volatility crisis in Bitcoin. But remember, volatility's very different from risk.
Volatility, if you're patient and you understand the fundamentals of what's going on, if you rode Amazon for the 23 years and accepted the 50% declines in its price activity but you knew the fundamentals were there, then you didn't really have risk as much as you had to be patient to ride through the volatility.
So, I don't see the government being able to take out Bitcoin at, you know, it's bopping around, let's call it $450-$550 billion of market cap; that is a living, breathing organism now in the digital space and it will remain so, whether the governments like it or dislike it. You and I both know that China, the second largest economy in the world, or arguably now the largest economy in the world, has banned Bitcoin and Bitcoin's had its best years of appreciation, despite that banning.
Peter McCormack: Right, so listen. If you're getting into this, there are some important questions that some of the more hard-core bitcoiners are going to care about, I think especially now because a lot of money's coming in from institutions and hedge funds and billionaires; how much do they know or care about some of the more important issues that are important for them? I think firstly, are you guys Bitcoin only; are you mucking around with shitcoins; are you guys just Bitcoin only and that's your focus?
Anthony Scaramucci: No, we're Bitcoin only. So, our fund's name is The SkyBridge Bitcoin Fund LP and since you cannot have an ETF in the United States, working alongside of David Polk & Wardwell, our lawyers, extremely white-show law firm here in New York, we organised this to be as easy as possible to do the paperwork; we organised it as easy as possible to have a lower priced entry point; $50,000, if you will. I mean, that's not for the hoi polloi, but it shouldn't be yet, frankly. I want this to be for the mass affluent, or for knowledgeable people, understanding the risk, having a 1% to 3% exposure in your core portfolio.
You and I both know that if you looked at Bitcoin over the last ten years, you could have had $1 in Bitcoin, 99 cents in cash, and outperformed every asset class, including the S&P 500. So, we know this about it and so therefore, my thing is for people that are not as sophisticated as you, or not in the space as long as you, take a baby step, but recognise this is here to stay; we're in the early innings.
SkyBridge wants to be known as someone that's going to help you democratise it. Oh, by the way, you have this historic opportunity now to get in before the institutions do; the institutions are coming. Could this be $100,000 per coin at the end of 31 December 2021? I believe it could be. And so, if you're in with us now and you go 4 to 1 on the money, you're going to be a very happy camper. You have to accept some volatility, you have to be patient.
We have a three-month lockup; why is that? Well, I want to try to gear people towards long-term holding of the asset and I also want to avoid the SEC regulatory issues around having a shorter-term lockup because therefore, you're not allowed to trade LPs in the United States and you're not allowed to have an ETF, so you can't synthetically create one through your LP; so, having a three-month lockup satisfies the SEC, it gives my clients an early access point into Bitcoin when I think it's got that flaw of stability now.
As you're mentioning, the introduction of institutions, smart hedge fund managers, the fact that I can store it at Fidelity; so now, if you're somebody that likes me and you know our reputation for 15 years but love Fidelity, you're getting the combination of our service, capability and Fidelity's storage, and you're getting the flexibility of getting out of it in three months if you need it. And by the way, we're coming in at a low cost. We're at 75 basis points.
If you want to operate with Grayscale, you're going to pay them 2%, but then you're going to buy them on the pink sheets in the over-the-counter market and you're going to buy them at a 20% to 30% premium to where the actual price is of the underlying asset. With us, you get a stamp of what that price is without any premium and you're buying it through us at 75 basis points. So, it's a cheaper access point until we get to an ETF, which could be one, two, three years from now. That could be Bitcoin $300,000.
We want to provide our investors with an early look and we're telling them, "Listen, this could be Amazon. Yes, you missed Amazon's IPO and you missed some of Amazon's growth, but you're catching Amazon in 2002. Let's take a look at what Amazon did from 2002 to 2021 and I think you're in for a very, very satisfying appreciation in this security". We've taken it very, very seriously and so, we've really tried to dot every i, cross every t, you know, but you get the point that I make.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, man. And, listen, you're taking it to Grayscale. Grayscale's where a lot of people have been going. If you're offering 75 basis points to their 2% and the premium and also, you can get in at $50,000, there should be a lot of interest there?
Anthony Scaramucci: Well yes. And we've already got, frankly, a lot of reverse enquiry. Of course, we've got to make sure that the people are qualifiable; they have to go through our compliance issues, AML issues, all that stuff; but, yes, we have a lot of enquiry. If we're right, and I don't want to sound over-confident; I've been humbled in my life many times, I've been fired a few times, I had that disastrous firing from the White House, I want to say this with a lot of humility, but I've got a lot of conviction too and I've done a lot of homework on it.
So, if we're right, this is a really good entry point for people, and we're able to provide them with ability to get in at a lower cost than Grayscale without the premium. Remember, it's not only the 2% you're paying Grayscale; but, you're coming in at a 20% to 30% premium and so, you know, some people are already starting to switch out of Grayscale, flowing into SkyBridge, to take advantage.
Where they're selling it at the premium up here and they're taking $1.30, if you will, and investing it in Bitcoin at its NAV; and, I think that's a really good trade and I think we'll see a lot of that activity, Peter.
Peter McCormack: Have you spent much time looking at the infrastructure to Bitcoin, the dev community, how they're supported, how it actually works? I mean, I've been putting pressure on people that are involved in Bitcoin in a way, like the exchanges, to try and support the developers. But also recently, I've been putting a bit of pressure on people to try and support Coin Center, because Coin Centre do a lot of the work, heavy lifting with the regulators down in Washington, especially with what's going on right now; have you looked at that?
Anthony Scaramucci: So, my partner, my President Chief Operating Officer, just participated in something where it's a not-for-profit, where young developers are operating on the architecture of the system and the nodes, and improving the architecture of the system, where he's been involved with that not-for-profit. And yes, we are starting to get more affiliated with the Coin Centers, if you will, and the people that are going to be lobbying the government to explain to the government that this has value to the government, to allow this ecosystem to exist, and to proliferate and to frankly flourish.
When you think about it, it's hard to peg the dollar to gold for all of the reasons. You just have to take a satellite photo of Fort Knox and you'll get a sense of what I mean, but man, if you could start pegging portions, or you could have a digital coin emanating from the United States that has a basket of these securities, or maybe it's just Bitcoin, all of a sudden the ideas behind Bitcoin, the potential appreciation for Bitcoin, become very, very real.
So, yes, we want to be involved with that, we want to do that. I mean again, the first thing that we did at SkyBridge, even before we announced a launch of the fund, was to establish that node, because I want people to know that this is not a gimmick for us. I may be a disaster as a politician, or a political figure, but I've done a pretty good job growing two successful businesses; and, I've been steeped in fundamental training over the 33 years of my investment career; and, I grew up in a blue-collar family where my dad was a crane operator.
I've been a negative subsidy to my parents since the age of 15, where my work has had to go to them to help them, but yet I was able to create some level of financial independence in the United States. So, I'm a turtle, I'm a slow mover and so, I couldn't get there in 2014 but, you know what, I'm more comfortable at $27,000. That probably sounds ridiculous, because we now have the benefit of hindsight, but I'm more comfortable, Peter, at $27,000, knowing what I know about Bitcoin now, it's overall market capitalisation, the nodes, the circuitry, the network associated with Bitcoin, it's level of destruction of its competition; again, attacked over 6,500 times and here it is at $0.5 trillion. I'm more comfortable with it at $27,000 than I would be at $400, if that makes sense.
Peter McCormack: No, I get it.
Anthony Scaramucci: Somebody who really understands it would actually say, "Wow, that does make sense".
Peter McCormack: No, I get it. When it dropped to $3,500 earlier in the year, I wasn't buying; and, ever since it's been a clear $10,000, gone to $11,000, $12,000, I've been buying more; I get it. You get more of a confidence when certain things happen. I think things like what Saylor did with MicroStrategy and what's happened with MassMutual and what you guys are doing, there's so much activity now, so much happening, that you get a lot more confidence from other people. I get that and I think a lot of people understand that.
Anthony Scaramucci: Well, you know, Saylor and I have become close. I interviewed him for my SALT talks; I interviewed PlanB for my SALT talks; I don't know if you know Raoul Pal, you've probably had him on. I interviewed him as well. And Saylor and I have become close, because Saylor is an intellectual and ultimately, Saylor's looking at currencies that are being destroyed by federal governments around the world.
He'll say, "Wait a minute. I'm creating this economic rent through this corporation that I'm responsible for to the shareholders and the profits are coming in, but the money's being devalued by the government. So, the government's going to tax me and they're going to devalue the money that I'm being paid in, so I have to find a store of value".
Gold is obviously still, and it has been for 5,000 years, a store of value but if you really understand this network and you really understand this ledger, this is a more valuable, and should be, frankly, over the next 25 to 30 years, more valuable than gold, if you really understand what it is. So, I applaud Saylor for defending his shareholders and defending the preservation of their value by moving a lot of his assets into Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: You guys did $25 million; you've announced you've done $25 million. Is that $25 million of your own capital, or is that $25 million --
Anthony Scaramucci: Yes.
Peter McCormack: It is.
Anthony Scaramucci: So, the firm's capital, that would be my capital, my partner's capital, that would be some of our outside shareholders are in there, so it's a mixture of people. So, it's our firm and associated capital. I thought $25 million was the right number and that's what we started with. Listen, I don't want to jinx myself or anything, but we're probably up 15% to 20% on the position.
Peter McCormack: Nice! Are you already thinking of doing more though?
Anthony Scaramucci: Well me, personally, yes. All my funds, I don't have a personal trading account; I always thought that was a wrong thing to do. So, my money's in the hedge fund fund of funds; it's in the real estate fund which I described to you; and now, a portion of it has gone into the Bitcoin fund. I'll be adding to all three of those funds like I do every quarter.
So, the good news is, I live well below my means. The income that I'm getting from my clients, I take a portion of that and I chop it up between those three funds. I put it back to work so that I'm eating my own cooking alongside of the clients. So, yeah, I'll be adding to the Bitcoin fund, but the Bitcoin fund will be open to outside investors 4 January; that will be the Monday after the New Year. You can go to www.skybridgebitcoin.com and it's not operational yet, but it will be on 1 January. Then, you can point and click and we can take subscriptions there.
Peter McCormack: Who's the bigger bull; you or Brad, on Bitcoin?
Anthony Scaramucci: You know, it's interesting. I would say that he's the bigger bull in the sense that he describes himself as a Bitcoin maximalist. So, am I a Bitcoin maximalist? I'm more like what PlanB would say about it. I don't want to use the word "maximalist", because it has some weird derivations of the meaning. Am I a bull on Bitcoin; yes. Am I a believer that this could go to $300,000 to $500,000 a coin; yes. I can see that happening for so many different reasons. But, I think Brad is probably more passionate about it.
I have been historically more cautious, frankly. I'm probably a little bit more flamboyant when it comes to my mouth in politics, but you would find me surprisingly more cautious when it comes to investing.
Peter McCormack: Right, okay. Let me ask you another thing: how much of this is about the 21 million with your type of investors and clients, and how much is it that you guys think about or care about the other properties; the censorship resistance, the seizure resistance, how it's used by people in, let's say, Belarus right now who are protesting against Lukashenko? Some of them are surviving on the fact that Bitcoin is being sent to them. We've got the people in Nigeria, who are campaigning for the End SARS movement.
There are a lot of people around the world who are relying on Bitcoin for quite anarchist things and therefore, things like privacy are really important. Yet privacy really, especially with the US Government, is kind of anti what they want to do, especially with the way we saw everything that happened with Snowden and such like. How much do you care about that? Do institutions care about that, or do they just not; do they just care about the 21 million?
Anthony Scaramucci: Well, you know I'm politically inclined and so, if you really studied my personality as it relates to politics and policy, I'm a classic libertarian. I don't care about your sexual preferences; that's your body and you should be in control of your body. And so, when you think of Bitcoin, it is a libertarian idea.
If you think of AI as an example, AI is more tied to governmental control, right. They use AI for facial recognition in centralised places like China, and they look at your face going through the turnstile and then they give you a social score, and now you're under the gun of what George Orwell would say is Big Brother.
But, Bitcoin is decentralised and from that point of view, I believe it's going to increase freedom in our society, our global society; it creates freedom. So, am I getting a lot of psychic reward out of that and a lot of psychic energy; I am. If you're asking me a point blank question, "Do investors care about shit like that?", they probably don't. They want to make money and they want to be with things that they think are fundamentally sound that are going to go up in value.
But, if you're asking me personally; I am, yes. I believe that it's sorely needed in our society right now, because there's a tug of war going on right now between government and individual, and there's been that tension and struggle for 5,000 years and you want the individual to win. If you were a western liberal, and again I use the word "liberal" in the sense of the liberal democracy, the idea of liberalism being the individual has this own sovereignty themselves, The Sovereign Individual, then you want things like Bitcoin in the world because that will further that. But, it's against the idea of some of the eastern philosophies; it's against some of those things.
But, yeah, I'm a goddam renegade, Peter. Come on, think of my career! So you'd have to say of course I'm into that stuff.
Peter McCormack: All right, man. Well listen, look, a couple more Bitcoin questions then I've got to ask you about, as you call him, the Orange Maniac.
Anthony Scaramucci: Hey, you can ask me anything you want. I'm dealing with it all day. By the way, there are two Scaramuccis left in Trump's political career; that's 11 days times 2; that's it, a finito, Donald Trump.
Peter McCormack: Well listen, look, firstly let me close out on the Bitcoin stuff first.
Anthony Scaramucci: Yeah, go ahead.
Peter McCormack: Right, you're saying we're early, you think there's an avalanche of money coming in; what's telling you that; what are the signals you're getting that we're still very, very early?
Anthony Scaramucci: Well, it's not accepted, it's not regulated, it has all the features of early adoption. I think we're in the second phase of early adoption. You have the first movers, then you have the early adoption, then you have that native phase where it goes prolific, or it goes kinetic, in terms of its widespread use; and, I think we're in the early stage of the second phase.
So, yes, perhaps you put it on a USB at $50 a coin; I don't know. And, I'm sure there are people that have done that and there are people, you know, a massage therapist bought 15,000 coins at $5 and can't find her USB; she'd be worth $25 million. Yes, there are those stories. And of course, there's the $800 million pizza that was described in Ben Mezrich's book, and that's a fabled story for bitcoiners; but, I'm never going to be that guy; I don't want to be that guy, frankly, because I'm an investor.
The first thing you want to do when investing is, you know, there are two rules, right? The first rule is, don't lose money; and then, Peter, the second rule is, refer to rule number one. Those are the two rules. So for me, I see this has all the classic signs of early: limited institutional investors; tons of sceptics; tons of generational fogies that are giving a stank eye to Bitcoin. You've got limited regulation, as I've mentioned, and you've got this sort of libertarian streak that Bitcoin has, which means it will always have a native group of people operating it, for so many different reasons.
But, if you're sitting there on a hedge fund and you're watching money printing to the tune of 25% of the money supply being created in the 244-year-old republic, also known as the United States, you're like, "Okay, wait a minute; they're going to put on $8 trillion of debt and they're going to print most of it? Okay, where's that going and how's that going to show up in the world?"
Well, okay, you've got great technology and great innovation that are compressing prices; that's deflationary. But, you've got all this proliferation of money, which is inflationary; then you have all this debt on these societies. Okay, wait a minute, what am I doing; I'd better own a hedge on that stuff; I'd better own something that I know is scarce, that 21 million that we just referenced, and I know it's fungible and I know it's technologically sound. All of a sudden, that becomes compelling.
Trust me; 1% move by a Fidelity, a Vanguard, a MassMutual, a Ray Dalio, and those things are $300,000, $400,000 a coin, and it's a 1% move. Just think about the magnitude of money that that is. You're talking about $100 trillion; a 1% move is $1 trillion. Bitcoin goes from a $500 billion market cap to a $1.5 trillion market cap.
Peter McCormack: Damn. Now, listen, we've got to flip this up, because I'm conscious of your time. So, back in October, I got this other podcast, and I was working on this series called Chaos, which is about Donald Trump, kind of, and about the election. And, I'm watching this documentary on the BBC and on comes this, I'm sure he's from New York somewhere, Italian guy, called Anthony Scaramucci. And, I'm watching it and I'm like, "What is going on here?"
Then, we fast forward a couple of months and I get an email from somebody saying, "Do you want Anthony Scaramucci on your podcast?" I'm like, "Yeah, I want to talk to him about Bitcoin, but fuck, I want to know what happened!" What happened, man? You're sat at home one day, someone calls you up and says, "Do you want to come and work for Donald?" How did it all happen?
Anthony Scaramucci: No. I mean, the problem is, because people get their news in fragments, and particularly if they're watching TV, it's a three-minute news cycle, so I have known President Trump for 20 years. I had a relationship with him here in New York. I was working at CNBC as a paid contributor when he was on his very famous show, The Apprentice, at NBC, so we were working in affiliated networks. We saw each other at a lot of social events; we saw each other at the Robinhood hedge fund charities; and, we had a nice relationship. We raised money together for Mitt Romney in 2012. That's when we started to get closer.
Then, when he went to go run for President, he asked me to go work on the campaign. I said no; I was working with Scott Walker, and then I told Mr Trump that I would end up with George Bush if Scott came out of the race. So, I was with two other presidential candidates. But, when Jeb came out of the race, pursuant to a handshake that I had with Mr Trump, I said, "If they both come out of the race and you beat both of them, if you're really serious", which at the time of the conversation I didn't think he was, "I'll come work for you".
So, he beat both of them, he called me, I went up to see him, and so I spent almost a full year on the campaign. I provided media advocacy, I raised a ton of money for him, I gave him over $1 million of my personal money between the campaign, the pack, the inauguration, the transition; all of that stuff. And, when he won on 8 November, I was hosting Wall Street Week at the time. I was running SkyBridge doing just fine; had no inkling to work in Washington.
He was insistent and he offered me a job, actually, to be the OPL Director, the Office of Public Liaison. I was technically going to be the President's Chief Networking Officer, which I thought was a good job for me; to the great consternation of my wife, and she almost divorced my arse. She didn't want me to work for him. I mean, she hates him almost as much as Melania hates him. I don't think anybody can hate him as much as Melania, but she's up there. So, she wanted to divorce my arse over the thing, but I got very tempted.
So, my story is a cautionary tale about pride and ego. So when Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon blocked my original job, I called up Trump and said, "These are two arseholes and they're going to hurt you, they're going to hurt your administration, and I'm pretty good with people and sizing them. And, I'm going to tell you right now, Mr President, you're going to want to get rid of those two sons of bitches and when you do, give me a call; I'll take of it for you".
So, he called me in June and he said, "I want you to go work at the EXIM Bank". So, I went to the EXIM Bank; that's our import-export banking facility; it's a governmental agency. He said to me, "Senator Rand Paul wants to shut it down. I don't know, should I shut it down or not? You're a smart guy. I want you to go on assignment there for three weeks", and I had my company sold because I thought I was going to go work for him in the OPL position. The company got blocked in CFIUS; that's a whole other story, so I was able to return to the company.
But, I went to go work at the bank and I told him, "Don't get rid of the bank. The Chinese are putting $300 billion out and their bank was only putting out $30 billion. There's economic warfare; we need this bank". So, he kept the bank open, thank God. And, I'm sitting there at the bank, he calls me on 20 July, "Where are you?" I said, "Well, I'm at the bank where you told me to be". "Where is that; in New York or Washington?" I mean, that's fucking Trump, right.
I said, "No, I'm right across from the White House". He goes, "Okay, good, come on in, I need to talk to you". I said, "Okay, no problem". He said, "Call Madeleine, you'll get on the schedule, come on in". I got in; I already had my White House access badge, because I was at the bank. I walked through the thing, said hello to the Secret Service; I walked into the Oval Office; he was in the study off the Oval. I sat down with him. He said, "You were right about these two guys. I've got to get rid of them and I want you to come in and work for me. They were wrong to block your original appointment, and I need you to come in and take care of this for me".
So, that's a 20-year history; that's a full year of working for him in the administration in the campaign, if you will, and the transition. I was one of 16 people on his Executive Transition Team. So, I'm ready to work for him. And, I did that press conference that you're referencing; I answer those questions very honestly and I was trying to be an advocate, a supporter of his. Those guys were coming at me with knives. They're all backstabbers; I like to be a frontstabber; they were coming at me.
I made a mistake with a reporter that I trusted. I said something about Steve Bannon which was totally fake news; you could look it up, what I said about him. You'd have to do heart yoga every day to do what I said Steve was doing in his office. I didn't think the guy was going to report it; he reported it. I said, "If you report that, you're going to get me fired". I said, "I thought it was off the record. We know each other, our families have known each other for 50 years; why are you doing this to me?" "Well, I want to get the story out there". These journalists were out for blood; they hated Trump and they wanted me fired.
So, the story came out and, exactly as predicted, I got fired. Peter, you don't know me, but if you did know me, I'm a very accountable guy. I did something stupid, I did something fireable, I never blamed it on anybody else, no whining. I left the administration peacefully; I kept my relationship with Trump. He called me and said how am I doing? I said, "Relax, you just made me as famous as Melania and Ivanka; I didn't have to sleep with you or be your daughter, so I'm going to be just fucking fine, you don't have to worry about me". And, I tried to support him and I tried to be loyal to him.
But then, he starts acting crazier and crazier and crazier. I'm on the Bill Marsh show making an appearance. They're asking me about The Squad; he was telling The Squad to go back to the countries they originally came from. These are these African American and Islamic American Congresswomen. I said, "Jeez, I wish he wouldn't talk like that. They used to say that to my Italian American grandmother 100 years ago; that's a racist nativist trope and the President shouldn't talk like that. It's not serving his interest to talk like that".
Well, Bill Marsh said to me he was going to attack me. I said, "That's impossible. I worked for him for a year. I provided him hundreds of hours of media advocacy; I gave him $1 million personally; raised him tens of millions of dollars; there's no way he's coming after me". Bill Marsh said, "I'll bet you dinner". Well, I lost the dinner the very next day.
Bill said to me something that I'll share with you. He said, "You were 7 for 8 for Trump tonight. Trump is a demagogue; you've got to 13 for 10 for Trump. And, since you were only 7 for 8, he's going to come after you". So, he came after me. Well, guess what; I'm a New Yorker. What do you think happens when some arsehole's lighting you up on Twitter who's got a bigger Twitter following than you; what do you think you do?
Peter McCormack: Hit them back.
Anthony Scaramucci: You hit them back, yeah. So I called him Fidel Adolf Trump, because he's a fat fuck, and I was trying to get the F-A-T in there with the dictatorship, and I was fat-shaming him. And I got knocked off Twitter for 12 hours because of it. He came and hit me again and then of course I hit him even harder. And I know how to hit him because I know him.
Then he did something that is unconscionable, unforgiveable and is a red line. What is that? He went after my wife. Who the fuck does that?
Peter McCormack: Well, he does.
Anthony Scaramucci: My wife is a residential housewife in suburban America; he's attacking my wife using the Presidential Twitter feed, which is a Super Bowl audience times two; and so I said, "Okay, you're going after my wife; that's it; I'm not Ted Cruz". I took the gloves off and I started the cage match.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, man.
Anthony Scaramucci: And I started it out sheepishly saying, you know, I'm just being a dick, but as I tell his buddies, the guy couldn't win without me; because, once I turned on him in August 2019, I hit him as hard as a person could hit him and I stayed on him for 18 months, and I will tell you this: I did heavy damage to the son of a bitch, because I was doing local radio in Michigan, local television in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and I was doing "get out the vote" drives, even during the pandemic.
I teamed up with the Lincoln Project and we knocked him out of the White House. He's a jackass; he shouldn't have been in the White House and he's somebody that has embarrassed the country and, if you just watch his behaviour over the last 30 days, he's providing more and more evidence every single day that he was ill-suited for that office.
So, that's my side of the story. Now, Trump has his side: I'm an unstable lowlife, or whatever the hell he called me. He called me a lot of interesting things on Twitter; I personally don't give a shit. You don't grow up the way I grew up and get interested in a Twitter fight. I'm ready to fight the guy; I'm ready to fight him intellectually, fight him on policy, fight him on style; obviously, I'm not going to physically fight him, but you get the point I'm making.
Peter McCormack: Well, how many times have you fallen out with people like that publicly? He does it every week.
Anthony Scaramucci: I don't think I've ever fallen out with anybody. Hey, by the way, the guy that fired me, General John Kelly, United States Marine Corps, four-star General, he's a personal friend of mine now. He's been to my SALT Conference twice; I took him to Abu Dhabi with him; I interviewed him on a live stage in Las Vegas; we've done different interviews around the country; we're going to Iowa together to make a presentation to Iowa farmers in January in a COVID-safe environment.
John Kelly fired me, we were sore at each other, I don't pack a grudge. I'd happily have a drink with ex-President Trump, no problem, no grudge; but, don't attack my wife using the Presidential Twitter feed because, hey man, I'm not tolerating that. You've been listening to me for 45 minutes; do I look like Ted Cruz to you, Peter?
Peter McCormack: No. Look, the Ted Cruz thing is embarrassing, what he's done.
Anthony Scaramucci: I mean, come on, you've got to be kidding me. The guy went after his wife and he said his father killed JFK; and this guy's saying, "I'll argue your case in front of the Supreme Court and let me put knee pads on my elbows". I mean, that's not my personality. I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a fighter. I don't like public falling out with anybody but if you're going to attack my wife, you're going to expect me to come hard at you.
Even in the Mob, they leave the wives out of it, you know what I mean? Made guys are like, "What the fuck is this guy doing? Nobody does that".
Peter McCormack: All guys leave their wives out of it; it's just something you don't do. Fuck that guy. Well listen, look, I could talk to you for hours and hopefully, when these planes are flying again, I'll be in New York, and perhaps we'll do this again in person and actually have a --
Anthony Scaramucci: Okay, good. Well, listen, I appreciate you inviting me on. You've got a great following; congratulations on your podcast.
Peter McCormack: Thanks, man.
Anthony Scaramucci: I'm going to tell the Pomp that the Mooch has been on your podcast.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, tell him you've upgraded!
Anthony Scaramucci: And, I'm going to tell him I upgraded just so he can get super pissed because, you know, Italians have this competitive streak in them! You be well and Happy New Year, man.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, well before you go, listen, tell people where to find out more about this if they want to find out more; where do they go?
Anthony Scaramucci: So, you would go to www.skybridgebitcoin.com; you can go to www.skybridge.com/bitcoin; you could email me at ascaramucci@skybridge.com, if you're interested in the product, and I'll get you to our Product Manager and he'll take you through the product, and we'll sign you up. It's very easy to sign up; you just have to be qualified and we have to do the AML and we're very compliant-centric, but it's very simple and you could own Bitcoin through us safely, stored at Fidelity and I think we'll hold your hand if it gets volatile, because we have a very big belief in where this thing is going.
Peter McCormack: Wicked. Well, listen, respect for doing that. When I'm back in New York, maybe you, me and Pomp will go and grab and steak and you can tell me more of your stories.
Anthony Scaramucci: Okay, I would love that.
Peter McCormack: Anything you need, you reach out to me. Take care, good luck with the fund; great to talk to you, man. Peace out.
Anthony Scaramucci: Okay, all the best, I appreciate it. Real pleasure to be on; Happy New Year!
