Scaramucci sees a bright future for crypto but is “very concerned” about US politicians

Skybridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci believes the blockchain industry has a very bright future, but he is concerned about “very weak leadership” in American politics.

Scaramucci is a former White House communications director and Skybridge Capital manages the $7 billion Skybridge Bitcoin Fund.

He spoke candidly about the current and future state of crypto technology and politics in the US at the Australian Financial Review Crypto Summit held in Australia today. He said that while blockchain technology “seems cumbersome right now,” he sees a bright future for the industry.

However, he believes the biggest hurdle that could stand in the way of the industry’s growth is the “absolutely despicable” politicians in the American leadership. Scaramucci succinctly stated that “we should be very concerned” if some of the current frontrunners become the next president.

He specifically targeted Republican Senator Ted Cruz, whom he called an “apotheosis of hypocrisy,” as Scaramucci believes he tends to speak negatively about issues or people like Trump in private, but then speak positively about them in public . The industry will no doubt hope that this trait does not apply to Cruz’s views on cryptocurrency.

Senator Cruz has been a very public crypto advocate and on March 30 introduced legislation that would ban the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) to individuals.

Despite his concerns about politicians, Scaramucci believes that the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) designation of cryptocurrency as property “makes it almost impossible to wipe out in the United States.” Additionally, he sees President Biden’s latest executive order as “pretty optimistic.”

“For all of these reasons, I predict that we have already reached the transitional moment where bitcoin is fairly regulated and other cryptocurrencies are fairly regulated here in the US.”

Scaramucci compared those early days in the blockchain space to the early days of the internet, where webpages took 30 seconds to load.

“Imagine where we could be in five years, where virtually everyone in the western world can have a smartphone wallet on their smartphone and probably do business with every restaurant in the world.”

His long-term optimism for the future of the industry and for a $500,000 BTC price peak is tempered by near-term hurdles such as the lack of a spot bitcoin ETF, “ongoing aspects of Covid, various supply chain disruptions” and the war in the Ukraine.

Skybridge attempted to launch a spot bitcoin ETF but was rejected by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in January.

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He brushed off old TradFi critics Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger by simply saying that “Bitcoin doesn’t care” how they feel about it. In February, at a shareholders’ meeting, Munger likened Bitcoin to an “STD,” to which Scaramucci replied:

“Charlie Munger says (Bitcoins) the worst thing that has ever happened in this civilization, even though we detonated nuclear bombs, we had pandemics and global wars and genocides.”