CoinDesk Spotlight: Anthony Scaramucci on the 2024 Election, His Days in the White House and FTX

The Democrats have made a horrific mistake here. They, 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 policy. Hey, what's going on? Everyone? This is Coin Desks, 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, Jen. Good to be on with you. Thank you for including me. 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. No, I've been called so much worse than that in my life, Jen. I mean, are you kidding me? It's fine. You know, I mean, it's part of my life. I don't, 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, uh, that was seven years ago. Hard to believe. Uh, but again, you know, listen, I got fired for a reason. I, I mishandled a few things in the White House. The president fired me. He had the right to do that. And, uh, we move on. I think it's a lesson for people. Don't, don't hang on things. And if, if that's part of my legacy, so be it, 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 gonna, you know, be a part of who you are forever. And I think you've maneuvered that pretty well. Um 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 it's a big feat. Well, you know, I just wrote a book about this sort of stuff uh from Wall Street to the White House and back, I, 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, uh, by all the media, cable news pundits, late night comedians. Uh, 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 wanna 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 gotta make a decision about that. And uh 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, I remember coming home in the second or third grade complaining to her that there were uh boys in the cafeteria that were being mean to me and I remember her scoffing at me saying that I was absolutely ridiculous and, and uh, and wear big boy pants and don't listen to or ignore all that. And nothing is more true in the fish bowl of social media that we live in or negative articles that could be written about you. Uh uh 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 the train crash, you know, President President Biden is experiencing this right now. It would be a more interesting media story if he departed from the race as opposed to stay in it, you know, and so we 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. And I think one of the reasons why we're having so much stress psychologically in our society, even the surgeon general 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 to ignore that stuff. You know, it doesn't, has no relevance to your life. I think that's great advice. I sometimes read the comments and it doesn't do good things. I gotta just stop doing that, you know, you know, you know, Kellyanne Conway, uh the first day when I joined the White, that's a pretty good day, did a press conference. I was upstairs in the uh second floor of the West Wing and Kellyanne 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 uh I kept, you know, I mean, that was one of the bright spots from the White House. Uh uh uh my first day was pretty good. My last day was pretty bad, but I have left my notifications off for the last seven years. That's really smart. I think I'm gonna adopt that strategy. You know, the last time we spoke, I was a little tough on you. It was after the FTX fall out, there was another uh media frenzy that you had to go through. I know you were very close with Sam Bakeman Fried. Um There for business deals between the two of you. Uh 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 uh how you operate today? Um And more specifically as you're running Skybridge and looking more at crypto, I think it's a great question and I think that question, the answer to that question has evolved since you and I were talking about it, you know, when, when you were and by the way you were doing your job, which I respect. Uh It was a tough situation. Um I think one of the things that I like to do in tough situations is face the music. I just want you to imagine me uh reporting that I am now a hero on C NBC. Sam who's a storied a brilliant guy. He's the Mark Zuckerberg of crypto. He's bought 30% of my business. We're gonna have this generational transfer of knowledge and uh we're gonna go out and uh 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, uh we didn't know it at the time, but he was guilty of fraud. I mean, he was convicted of fraud and he's now serving a jail cell in a jail cell. It is a very, very painful experience. So I went from hero to zero in a nine week period of time. And uh it was a terrible situation for me. Um 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. Um 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, you're a crypto journalist. So, you know, a lot of those investors are sore, why are they sore, they're sore because they, they owned a Bitcoin or they own two Bitcoin. Uh, it got dollarized at $17,000 a coin. Those coins went to 60,000. So they should technically have 100 and $20,000 but they don't, they have 34,000. Um, but I think, you know, life being what it is, we adjust our expectations. Uh, 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 that there was lots of fraud in the industry, there's lots of over leverage in the industry. You know, people in the industry don't like Gary Gensler. I attended an event yesterday in Washington DC uh with a number of uh legislators, uh and Anita Dunn from the White House, uh talking about why we in the industry need bipartisan positive crypto legislation. We shouldn't let one party hijack it versus the other. And uh you know, Mark Cuban and he said I could say this, I'll say it, Mark Cuban. So 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 Janet Coindesk. Ok. But, but the, you got to tell Mark to come on and share that with you. Yeah. Well, I'll ask him to. But you know, the, the, the point that, that, that I'm making here is that weirdly, Gary helped the industry, I'm gonna 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 uh you know, you can't be arbitrary in the administration of the law, the, 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 twelveish month delay, uh the bottom fell out on the industry. All the fraud got exposed, all the over leverage in the industry got exposed. And I think it's a sturdier industry today. And I think those prices for Bitcoin, we're actually less levered, more sturdy. And of course, we have these uh ETF S that have gained a tremendous amount of cash inflows uh since they started in January. So uh three lessons. Number one, something bad happens. Get out there early, talk to people like Jenna coin desk or go on the air explain it. Number two, live your life with integrity. Uh, I didn't do anything wrong in that situation. I spent 4.5 hours with the Department of Justice. They had no problem with anything that I did. Uh, and life goes on and then the three third thing is if you're in something and you believe it, it stay in it. We have been remarkably rewarded that Skybridge by doing that. I, 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? It's been a while. I haven't talked to Sam. Uh I know that uh my friend Bill Cohen went to go visit him in prison. I think it'd be tough for me to do that because of, uh, the fraud that was perpetrated against me and my clients. I do feel bad for Sam. II. I have a, I know this, I shouldn't be saying this. Maybe it's because I got raised Catholic. I have a soft spot for, for Sam. Uh, while I'm sore at him for what happened. I have forgiven him and I have moved on. Uh, and I, I hope 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, uh issues, mental health related issues. And uh I hope, I hope that there's uh you know, up, up some level of rehabilitation for Sam in the future. I think there are people who um had a really bad experience, I guess you could say during the FFTX is debacle, people are likely going to get paid back like you said, um now, but I think that there are people who went through that experience and feel like, you know, Sam. Sam was sentenced, it was a fair sentence. He shouldn't get out. What would you say to those people? Um, I under, I, I first I understand those people, I would say this is, this is why democracies and uh varying thoughts are so fascinating and you have to work through these and uh good democracies or good debate. Uh You're partially displeased and you're partially pleased, you know, I, I guess what I would say to those people, uh You know, they're right and if that's where things go, uh, then that's it, he'll serve his, yeah, typically in a situation like that you serve 20 of the 25 years if you've had good behavior in prison. And so then they'll end up serving 20 of the 25 years. Um And they're right and there really is no point of debate, I guess. Um, I have found in life that uh are ability to pardon people or ability to forgive people, uh is a benefit to us. As opposed to not only just them but as a benefit to us, you know, when I was a kid, the Pope was shot, uh, before your time. But, uh 1981 he was shot in Saint Peter's Square. He was almost mortally wounded. He survived the gunshot wound. Uh, they, 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, that's above the call of duty of a human being. But, you know, 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. Uh, and I think about things like that. So that's me and I other people or in another direction, we could have the debate if I lost that debate. Uh What those people are saying is fair and I would accept it. Ok? I think that's, that's fair. I want to talk about your former boss. Now, Donald Trump, we learned that he's gonna be speaking at a Bitcoin conference later this month. He's become this crypto forward candidate and I wanna hear your real thoughts here. Um You know, the guy you worked for him, is he being opportunistic? Is there authenticity in what he's saying? 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 a political malpractice on the part of the Democrats for some reason, they ceded the uh crypto regulation to uh Elizabeth Warren and to Gary Gensler, it's been an unbelievable disaster for them. Uh It's President Trump's election to lose. Now, uh President Biden has a decent record. He's resort some manufacturing. He's built up uh a microprocessor foundries in the United States. He got infrastructure bill done. There's a lot of different things that he did that were beneficial to the country, help the country heal post COVID. Uh But they've really lost the plot on a lot of different things. You know, if you can't put sentences together at a debate, if you can't work as the president, 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. I think you're trying to tell people don't believe your lying eyes. You know, this person is totally together and totally with it. And then let's put him up on stage at age 81 and you see him dotter, I feel like I feel actually bad for him. Um I guess what I would say to President Biden. There are graveyards filled with men. Charles de Gaulle once said this, there are graveyards filled with men that once thought they were indispensable. Uh They would have been better off ceding to a new generation of democratic leaders. Uh And then Biden could have wrote off in the sunset with a pretty good record. So now they're faced with this uh very rough decision to make 100 and 20 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 force the Democrats to be more open to it and maybe we'll get rid of the Gensler's and the warrens who have been a disaster for the industry. Uh and I think been a disaster as public servants. So, um 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. You know, 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 gonna 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. So, yeah, the car that we just manufactured is gonna blow up. Uh, I don't know, but for some reason in politics I have trumped arrangements in, I mean, somebody called me a never Trumper Jen. I laughed. I said, well, first of all, I was once a Trumper. See definition. I'm not a never Trumper. If you want to say I have trumped arrangement in, that's fine. But I see myself as having Trump reality syndrome. I, 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 uh 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 uh 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, 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 policy. Well, I mean, I, I would love to hear from you. What do you think it actually means? Polly market has Trump at a 62% chance of winning the election if Trump actually wins the election, do we really see any change in the US when it comes to the furthering of crypto legislation and crypto regulation? Or, or is that something that still drags? No, I think him and his team will promote a, they, they'll, they'll, they'll put a pro sec pro crypto pro Digital Asset sec commissioner in place, uh, 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 uh have a, a pro crypto friendly administration. He, it's no sweat off of Mr Trump or any of the people working for him to help this industry. This is a big mistake. You know, the Democrats, I guess a little Warren thinks, let me block the industry here in the US. Ok? Well, the industry is gonna grow around you and you're gonna lose intellectual capital and capital, capital. Uh, 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 pick. Fortunately 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, uh, so, uh, if we stop doing that it'll be better for the country and the industry. And if we don't stop doing that, uh, guys, like President Trump will get elected because, uh, there's 50 million or so people that own crypto, they don't, they don't like this nonsense and, and a lot of those people, do you think that Biden should be the Democratic candidate? So I've been public on that. I, I said he should not be. I, I think that uh uh I think it's prima facie that he should not be. Um And I hope he steps down and I hope they pick a younger uh more uh fresher candidate if they decide not to do that. Uh I will be with President Biden. I'll try to help him win. Uh And uh that's it because I see, I see President Trump as a danger. Uh If Trump wins, it is what it is. I'm American. I love my country. Uh Dissent is a positive force in the United States 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? And I would be positive we got to get rid of Elizabeth Warren and Gary Gensler. And I think uh that would give them the opportunity to reset things and I think they would get, you know, remember Biden's got a lot of Warren acolytes in the White House with him uh that are uh directing policy and I think a new person come in and say, hey, don't know, those people don't care. Let's start a new. Have you been following the POY tokens at all? I haven't. No, I'm not that familiar with it there. 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. I haven't followed that. So maybe I'm getting old. I don't know. That's not something I would follow. Yeah, you don't, you don't have to. It's, it is a little silly. I know. I know, um, on a more serious token that you have $100,000 Bitcoin prediction by the end of the year for you, what, what needs to happen to get there? Well, I think we got to get through the FDX situation and, uh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I meant to say the Mount Gox situation because I want to bring up FDX in a second because they're, they're conjoined. If we get through the Mount Gox situation, the Bitcoins or, and I'm going to be a recipient of some of those and I'm not selling mine. But 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 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, they, they feel that they are owed more than that because their Bitcoins or, or tokens went up. But you know, getting that cash, $16 billion could five or 10 billion of that re-enter cryptocurrencies is 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 123 4% Bitcoin over the next 34 or five years is less supply of Bitcoin and it will push the prices up. 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 focussed hedge fund. Talk to me about what's going on there. So I, so I actually didn't read the article. I know this is an article from Cathy Burton who wrote my financial obituary last May. She basically said we were going out of business and our performance was terrible and there was some truth in the article uh from last May, we did have bad performance. Uh I didn't like the fact that, you know, she sat for an interview with me for three hours, didn't I mean she did, she offered no counter dote to her uh obituary to Skybridge. And so lo and behold, and I hope this is in the article we've had very, very good performance. I'm not allowed to talk about it, but hopefully it's in the article and I think Kathy is 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. Our prospectus allows us to set the redemptions. We have redemptions every six months in our fund and we can set them from 5 to 25%. They're set at five right now because some of the wire houses at the bottom put cells on our fund, those wire houses 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 uh 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. Uh We're just letting them out not as quickly as some would like. And they're complaining to Cathy Burton and she doesn't like me for some reason and that's fine. We, you and I spent the first part of this uh podcast talking about how you have to deal with that in life and not take it too personally. I would imagine. Uh, if we're up 40% this year, which is quite possible. Uh She'll probably write another article, maybe it'll be another negative article. I don't know. But, uh, you know, it, 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. Uh, and Skybridge is operating inside of the guidelines of that prospectus 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 as a quick follow up to that, you know, maybe talk to me a little bit about some of the factors that first led to the curtailing of redemptions in 2022 and how they have or haven't changed. Now, just trying to make sense of the article because I don't want to discredit when you have a 15 year relationship with the Wire houses and the wire houses, you have one bad quarter and the Wire houses 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 edge fund industry are like Anthony, you made a terrible mistake having wire houses distribute your product because they're very whimsical about when they pull the plug and these wire houses pull the plug at the bottom. Jen, you know, we're up a lot of percent. I'm not allowed to get into the details, but go take a look. These wire houses 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 is uh people will get out, they'll get out on a timely way. Um A lot of people, there are also a ton of people, so Ky didn't interview these people. But there are a ton of people say, thank God 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 there's really nothing has changed. Uh I love, uh 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, we'll talk about it again. All right, we gotta wrap it there. Anthony. Thank you very much for joining us on this episode of Coin Desk Spotlight and I'm, I'm sure we'll talk to you soon. It's great to be on with you.