Anthony Scaramucci is the founder of SkyBridge Capital and the Salt Talks conference. In this interview Anthony talks about his background, discovering Bitcoin, BTC’s growth, adoption, and 2021 price prediction, Skybridge’s Bitcoin Fund, Tether Bitfinex Settlement, Digital Dollar CBDC, Crypto Regulations, and much more.
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Interview Transcription
Tony: Hi everyone! Welcome back to the Thinking Crypto Channel. I have a very very special guest with me Anthony Scaramouch, who’s the founder of Skybridge Capital and Salt Conference. Anthony, it’s great to be speaking with you today.
Anthony: I got my crypto branding going here, all right.
Tony: Very cool.
Anthony: Good to be on, thank you for having me.
Tony: Well, it’s an honor to be speaking with you. I’m a big fan of your work and I thought we could start with your background. Where did you grow up and what did you want to be when you were growing up?
Anthony: Well, you know when I was 7 8, they were landing people on the moon, so I was 100% confident that I was going to be an astronaut. Like everybody wanted to be an astronaut in my second-grade class. So, I knew more about the moon back, then you could possibly imagine. I was like Dexter’s laboratory and a big time Jimmy Neutron Nerd about the moon when I was a kid. But yeah then you get older you’re like, okay I got to make money. So, my original idea was to become a lawyer because they were paying lawyers, the starting salary for lawyers when I came out of school was $65,000 a year. That was like double what my dad was making. So, I was like all right my dad was a laborer then he became a crane engineer or a crane operator. 42 years of the same company and I’m like, okay man if they’re going to pay lawyers first year 65 grand my dad’s making like 33. That’s what I’m going to do.
So, that was my very naive two-dimensional thought process on career planning. So, I applied to seven schools I got rejected from Yale. I got accepted to Harvard and several other schools and so I ended up going hard. Now I’m at law school, hating it, not that law school is not a bad place or anything like that it’s just like it’s like there’s no way I’m going to be a lawyer. I’m like bored out of my mind, so I crossed the river. The Harvard business school was recruiting, you know companies were recruiting over there. McKinney, Goldman Sachs I’m taking you back 33 years ago. So, I went into my Goldman Sachs interview Tony, I had 100% polyester on, okay.
Polyester black Guido suit, I had a polyester shirt and tie and I had these like Capezio dance shoes that we called Cockroach Killers. Okay, back in the early 80s my hair was blown back like Tony Monero and Saturday night. And I walked in there and I was talking about the Tedspread and interest rate valuation metrics and macroeconomics. The Goldman partner looked at me, there’s a woman in there with him. He says, ‘Okay, can I see you for a second.’ I said, ‘yes sir’. Yeah, well step outside step outside. I said, yes sir. He puts his arm around me because okay kid let me tell you you’re a smart kid. You’re the worst dressed person that we’ve ever met.
Okay, and literally I was like fully flammable for my first job interview. So, he’s like look you got to go buy yourself a suit it’s got to be natural fibers. You got to have a cotton shirt I mean you look like shit. And if you don’t do it, you’re not going to be able to get this job. So, I’m going to invite you back to Goldman but you got to dress appropriately for it. It was a rite of passage story for me, you know I was a blue-collar kid never saw the inside of a country club, never hit a golf ball never hit a tennis ball. So, I was very grateful to Goldman for picking me up taking me in and it was a big maturation process. I got fired from Goldman 18 months after I arrived there and then two months after my firing I got rehired into Goldman.
So, you thought my first firing was at the white house, see I couldn’t fire before I mean I’d probably be fired again. You know what I mean. But that’s my story. I got into finance because it was paying more money and being aware. I would like to tell you that it was some esoteric I’m living my dream sort of Bullshit, that is not the case. I needed to pay back the several hundred thousand dollars of school debt that I had, but I do love finance. It turned out that I got very lucky. I did it for expedient reasons and monetary reasons, but it has become a labor of love over the over the years.
Tony: Sure, so it sounds like you cut your cheat at Goldman and then you grew from there. You went Lehman brothers and you have now a plethora of finance experience and you started Skybridge Capital. How did that idea come?
Anthony: Let me give you 30 more seconds, and so I left Goldman after seven years. I was fired once in that period of time rehired, but I was there effectively for seven years. Then I went to start my own company. I had my own business for five years. I sold it to Neuberger Barman. Neuberger got bought by Lehman, so that’s how I ended up at Lehman. I fulfilled my contract at Lehman and left in 05 march of 2005 to start Skybridge. So, Skybridge will be celebrating its 16th anniversary march 7th of 2021. So, that’s my whole odyssey to where we are right now.
Tony: Wow, congratulations on the 16th anniversary.
Anthony: I mean let me put it this way, I’m there 16 years less my 11-day fiasco in the White House. Okay, so you know, but what are you gonna do. 33 years in finance minus 11 days.
Tony: So, let’s talk a little bit around you know at the time at your White House, excuse me. Would you see yourself in politics again in the future?
Anthony: Well, I don’t want to say 100 no because anything can happen, I’m not a politician. Like I hate these politicians that say, oh I’m never going to run from like Elizabeth Warren three weeks or a month before she announced her presidency or candidacy for the presidency. I’m not running for president and then she runs for president. I mean these people are a bunch of you know hypocrites’ sycophants and liars, right. So, I’m not any of those things I’ll tell you exactly how I feel. So, maybe we’ll have to see. You know I don’t have a party that I live in right now. I’m a center-right guy, I’m not a Trumplican, I’m not a Trumpist. I think he’s got to screw loose and I think he hijacked the party and turns it into a personality called.
I’m not a democrat. I don’t think we can go hard left on these issues. We have to heal the society, we have to make society better for middle and lower income people. We have to create a platform of equal opportunity but I’m not about equal outcomes.
Tony: Sure.
Anthony: I think that would be a disaster for our society. I want you to get very rich off of your industry and your ideas and your creativity. And that’s really what we want in our societies is people to be ambitious and to grow the pie through their ingenuity. But you have to uncap their upside in order for them to be able to be motivated to do that.
Tony: Sure. Well, I would love to see you in some way somehow because you are a New Yorker to be involved maybe someday mayor local government wise. That would be cool.
Anthony: I live out of long; I couldn’t be mayor I could run for governor but he can’t run against Andrew Cuomo. Number one, he would kick my ass in but number two he’s a family friend and we go back a long time. So, I don’t think he would appreciate me running against him and I wouldn’t want to be in that mud fight against him. But you never know, I mean you know I’m not that young but I’m young enough, where who knows. And my wife may you know she’ll probably stay with me if I decide to. I got to figure it out with her too I mean right now I’m running a re-election on my marriage, Tony. And I could be on a one-day term for all I know so you know you got to be careful. Are you married?
Tony: Yes, happy wife, happy life, right.
Anthony: Exactly. So, I don’t want to piss her off either you know.
Tony: Sure. Now you’re in the political limelight you’re in the financial limelight and usually with that comes maybe misconceptions about you know people headlines and all kinds of things. Are there any misconceptions that you would like to address?
Anthony: Well, I mean listen I mean I’m polarizing. I mean people if you have a political view then all of a sudden you get demonized and you get disfigured. People want to attack you, so that they can disfigure you or demonize you or characterize you in a certain way so that your opinions or the things that you’re saying will also be demonized. So, one of the greatest courses I took in law school was trial advocacy, and the professor said. ‘If you’re wrong on the facts start attacking the person.’ Because it’s an ad hominem attack and then if you do that you might be successful in the case. So, that’s what happens in politics. I don’t care, I think that’s the more important thing. I think you’re a young guy and this is a message to all your podcast listeners.
It took me a while to get here. I’m 57 years old, I don’t give a shit what other people think of me. What other people think of you is, none of your business. Now when you’re young, you think everybody’s thinking about you and you’re worried about what other people think.
Tony: Sure.
Anthony: When you get older you recognize they’re not thinking about you. They only give a shit about themselves and so you’ll be just better off living your life being happy, have a gratitude list approach life aggressively. So, I don’t care. I mean I’m sure some people think I’m a buffoon because what I said in the White House other people dislike me, because I’m a New Yorker, I’m a little brash. Some people think that I work for trump so I got to be a bad guy. Other people think I’m a bad guy, because I left trump and I think he’s a douche bag. I don’t care. I’m just going to be me and like you said, I think that’s the fun thing about being in New York.
Tony: Yeah, absolutely that’s great advice. And as I get older, I’m learning to have that mindset as well, really good stuff. So, I want to ask you know how did you first come across Bitcoin and Krypto and what was your aha moment?
Anthony: Well, I never I guess I have an aha moment but I have a gradual incremental move into Bitcoin. So, my aha moment actually came in 2014.
Tony: Wow.
Anthony: He said, well what the hell why did you buy the Bitcoin then. You know obviously I would have been a genius if I did that but I’m not a genius. I’m an incrementalist, I’m an institutionalist. So, when the Wiggle Vosses came to me to discuss Bitcoin and the introduction of cryptocurrency, they were at my conference. I said, ‘Okay, that sounds interesting that sounds like a lot of fun. That sounds like something that could work, but it is not fully adopted yet. It’s not reaching escape velocity pursuant to Metcalfe’s law at 400’.
So, I’ll say something to you that an institutionalist would appreciate but a big corner would probably scoff at and say that I’m late to the game. I like Bitcoin better at $30,000 or $40,000 then I do it four hundred dollars. He said, what the hell’s wrong with you? Of course, I would have liked to have bought it at 400. But I didn’t know that Bitcoin was going to be where it is today. I actually still think we’re in very early innings for Bitcoin. So, buying it under $100,000 coin to me I think is a huge value for people. You probably read this book if you haven’t, I’ll recommend it to you and your people. It’s Bitcoin, it’s by Dominic Frisbee. He’s a British historian and economist. It’s a great book Richard Branson, at the top of it read it and glimpses of the future.
If you get it, this is an aha moment. You read this you’re like aha. This is a monetary network akin to google being a search and advertising network, akin to Amazon being a retail network.
Tony: Sure.
Anthony: This is decentralized, it’s anonymous. Its crypto graphs are impregnable. Good luck trying to break them. And by the way, as your supercomputer gets more powerful to break them the supercomputers and the nodes get more powerful to offset them. So, good luck on all that. So, for me, I’m very very excited about the future of money and I think the future of money is going to be decentralized. I think it’s going to be exchanged over the Blockchain. And if you read the ascent of money, look I got all my books here for you Tony. Look at this one, it’s another great book your people should read. It’s in the wrapper, I’m going to take it out of the wrapper.
I read it about six years ago. I just re-bought it on Amazon because I gave it to my oldest kid. And I wanted to buy the hardcover because it’s a great book by professor Ferguson. So, he’s basically describing to you what the characteristics are of money. And guess what. Your life has changed as a result of technology. You’re driving in a car now as opposed to a horse’s carriage or flying in a plane, as opposed to a train in terms of your mass transportation or maybe you’re super rich you’re flying privately on your private plane. But what do we know about money? Money is a technology, it’s a tool that allows us not to have to barter with each other okay and it’s a way to keep score.
So, what we know is that if it’s safe if it’s secure and people trust it, then lo and behold it will become a Bonafede’s. It will become a store of value or currency. Bitcoin has all of those characteristics and it would be natural that technology has improved so many aspects of your life. Why would it improve the money or the store of value? And oh by the way, we have some destructive forces in the fiat currency game now. We’re producing money now out of thin air and we’re not as cautious with it or as responsible with it as we were over the last hundred years. Since the introduction of the Fed, we are monetizing our debt. We’re producing lots of m1 and m2 money supply.
Money supply is up 26% in the last six months on its way up to 40 and we get the stimulus passed. So, let me just stop and take a deep breath with your listeners. You’re going to have 40% more dollars in circulation in the last 12 months than we had in the prior 244 years.
Tony: Right.
Anthony: That’s why this is going up. So, the weird thing is your assets like your real estate, your mickey mantle card, your art collection is going up in nominal dollars they’re not going up in Bitcoin. Because Bitcoin is actually more stable that people want to give it credit for, because it is tracing the monetization process of fiat currency. So, this is a very big reason why you need to own some of this because it’s going to be the value agent. It will be the transfer mechanism, the store of value of the future.
Tony: Yeah, absolutely. And there’s a question I want to ask. Maybe you can take us behind a curtain since you’ve been in the political realms. You know at one point, Trump when he was president, he tweeted that I’m not a fan of Bitcoin and the US dollar is still the world reserve currency yada, yada. Is that a stance you think that was personally from trump or just anybody in that seat needs to make that statement, because Bitcoin is a threat to the US dollar?
Anthony: Yeah, I think it’s anybody in that seat that would also be Bill Dudley, it’s Jack Yellen. You know they have to say those things, because you know there’s fud fear uncertainty and doubt and then there are fuddy-duddies, okay. And fuddy-duddies are septicenarians that are in the establishment either at the Fed or treasury or in the Washington infrastructure. They know that the dollar has been a very powerful political mechanism and it has been a sanctioning force, they know that. So, a result of which we have to uh protect it in their minds. Now what they also know because they’re not stupid these are very smart economists that, that thing is growing with or without their help. And you know you’re at a trillion dollars now, it’s the fastest scalable idea in terms of med cabs law adoption of any idea.
It got to a trillion dollars in 12 years. You know if you go through the other companies 20 plus years for Google 40, plus years for Apple, 35 or 40 years for Microsoft. All of a sudden, this thing’s doing it in 12 years. It’s a genie that’s been unleashed. You’re not going to put it back in the bottle anytime soon. And by the way if Bitcoin wasn’t invented in 2009, it would have already been invented by now. Someone would have come up with Bitcoin. And there were other products like Digi Cash in the you know mid 80s into the early 90s that could have been workable. Some people think Santoshi Nakamoto whoever that may be worked at Digi Cash. But one of the issues with Digit Cash was being controlled by a company. And your money for it to really be successful and for people to really trust it needs to be decentralized. What do you got with Bitcoin? You have an open source cryptographic network.
So, yeah, I get where the policymakers are. I love that about the policymakers. So, I had three criteria. You know you said was my aha moment, so the Winklevoss’s come to me. They show me this they tell me, I should buy it, I can’t figure out how to buy it and I got to store it on the USB. Probably would have lost the goddamn thing anyway. But I said to them well three things have to happen. Medcast law this has to scale and even though it’ll be more expensive when it scales it will be more proof in its concept. And that’s something an institutionalist I will be happy with. The second thing that has to happen is that the regulators have to pay attention to it. The tax authorities have to pay attention to it.
And by the way, they don’t have to like it they could even be like India or China and say no moss nine on Bitcoin. No problem, but just the fact that they’re all pining on it means that it’s become big enough where it’s impregnating the whole global society. So, I don’t care if the regulator says yes or no just as long as they’re thinking about it. That’s good enough for me. And then the third thing which is super important to me is storage. We can store our Bitcoin cold storage unplug from the internet at places like Fidelity. They have an insurance wrapper their balance sheet their name brand. I’m very comfortable with them. We have a great partnership with them.
So, those three criteria so we got to get going on this Bitcoin thing. Because it’s got 1% adoption, imagine where this thing could be at 5% adoption or 8% of adoption.
Tony: Sure, and we’re seeing a lot of companies Tesla Microstrategy square adding Bitcoin to a balance sheet.
Anthony: Apple is gonna buy Bitcoins?
Tony: That’s a question I want to ask you.
Anthony: I’ll probably get this wrong. You know I think that Apple these very large companies. They don’t look at competition as much as they look at fear of governmental regulation. All these regulators are sore on Bitcoin, would apple be bold enough to buy it. I don’t know maybe; I don’t want to say no because then someone will play the podcast look how stupid Anthony is. But if they don’t buy it, I’ll understand why. But if they do buy it, I think that’ll be a seismic development. It’s one thing for MicroStrategy to buy it and for Elon Musk to buy it. These are avant-garde earth-shaking entrepreneurs.
Apple is now very much part of the establishment several trillion-dollar company. If they go to start moving some of that big balance sheet into Bitcoin, I think that’s going to send a big signal to people.
Tony: Right. So, on that note, I recently interviewed the Mayor Miami. He’s looking to potentially allocate some of the city’s treasury reserves into Bitcoin. So, if you have companies doing this and you have local governments and cities and possibly central banks around the globe, do you see the US government eventually capitulating and look this is going to become part of the financial structure?
Anthony: Well, I think you know this treasury owns right now Bitcoin. I don’t know how much they own, I guess we could Google it. But they do own some Bitcoin. There are innovation people at the treasury department that have got the government long Bitcoin. Will we have a digital dollar at some point? I believe that we will. If you’re going to have a digital RenMb or you on, you will probably have a digital dollar. Will that hurt Bitcoin? I believe it won’t. All that will do is, it’ll increase the likelihood that they’ll be really fantastic software on devices like this. Where we can swap back and forth from coins to dollars to RenMb. You know look out those foreign exchange places in the airports, look out. Because you’re not going to have to do that anymore you’ll have to write on your phone.
So, the world is changing, the world’s getting better. Technology has made the world better by and large. I mean we have to deal with the carbon footprint issue. We have to deal with the clean air clean water issue. I’m not trying to make light of that, but by and large technology has improved our living standards. It’s improved our societies and why shouldn’t it be showing up in our money
Tony: Agreed. And you know yesterday, well I should say maybe two days ago, we had the Tether Bitfinex settlement. And that was of course an element of risk that many institutional investors were looking at. And since that’s settled, do you see okay more folks be on the institutional side wall street side being more willing to get involved with Bitcoin?
Anthony: So, really good question. I think that, that settlement is going to dispel some of the nonsense and misinformation that’s out there, right.
Tony: Sure.
Anthony: So, was the moon landing faked? Okay, it wasn’t okay I can prove that to you empirically. But there’s nonsense out there that says it was. Did Tether affect Bitcoin? It’s almost impossible for Tether to have ultimately affected Bitcoin. Did they do nefarious things with Tether and not back it with the appropriate collateral, so therefore commit financial fraud? Yes. Could it have affected Bitcoin on the margin? Possibly, but if you look at Bitcoin scale relative to Tether, it’s almost economically impossible. So, the fact that they’ve settled they’ve sort of taken that whole thing out of the equation. Bitcoin’s trading like water. You know it’s moving, it’s volatile. But tell you what. Anything that’s on the curve of Metcalf’s law where you’re valuing it pursuant to this exponential growth of its network is volatile.
Let me just back that up for 30 seconds. Amazon goes public May 15 1997. You put 10,000 in Amazon 24 years later, you have 21 million 140,000. However, you had the stomach seven periods of time where Amazon dropped fifty percent.
Tony: Yeah.
Anthony: If you were a hodler of amazon you got rewarded, because it fully executed along the curve of Metcalf’s law. But here’s the cool thing about Bitcoin, this is the really cool thing. There’s no CEO, there’s no political intrigue in the C-suite. There’s a decentralized network that’s causing this scalability and causing this network effect.
Tony: Now as far as Skybridge’s Bitcoin fund, tell us about that how much as far as assets under management. What do you start with and where were you at today?
Anthony: So, we have 9 billion in assets under management at Skybridge. At current market prices, we have about 550 million dollars in Bitcoin. Our Bitcoin specific fund the Skybridge Bitcoin fund, we started that with 25 million dollars of our firm’s capital and it’s now scaled in six short weeks to just under a hundred million. So, some of that’s appreciation but a lot of that is new asset transfer. We’re taking in money every single day. We have a 75-basis point management fee structure and we have a limited partnership structure that has a 90-day lock-up to it. Why? Well we wanted to avoid the premiums that are being currently paid by having that daily trust in place.
Can’t trade the Bitcoin for the people in scale the way we would like to. You could buy it in the grayscale trust, they’ll charge you 2%. In addition to the 2%, you likely will pay a 20 to 30% premium in the marketplace. Or you can buy the Bitcoin through us at NAV. You’ve got a 75-basis point management fee versus 2%. All that’s positive, the negative the potential negative is that you have a lock up. You know you got to wait 90 days in our portfolio. You get 60 days of holding 30-day notice then you can get out of it in 90 days.
Now if you’re a long-term holder like me and like I’m trying to steer my clients to it’s not a big deal, one of your questions should be well what happens when there’s an ELF. We are open to merging or converting our private fund into an ETF. When the regulators are telling us that it’s okay, so my message to people is look you can’t get into an ETF now in the US.
Tony: Right.
Anthony: you can buy into the Canadian ETF, but remember they have a 40% tex. You know they have to be very very cautious they can only really drive Canadian investors into that ETF for it to be sustained from a regulatory perspective. But you’ll eventually get an ETF codified by the SEC. We’ll convert our capital base into that ETF, then you’ll have the liquidity and you’ll have this instant easy access to Bitcoin. And oh, by the way, if you’re a potential investor I want you in that before that happens. Because I believe there’ll be an avalanche and a cascade of demand once those products are up and running. And I’d like to get my clients in there before that frankly.
Tony: Sure. I am interviewing Hester Pierce at the SEC in a couple of weeks and hopefully fingers crossed we can get an ETF approved this year. I know quite a few folks have Winklevoss wins Bitwise and so forth. But great to hear that you’re gonna do that integration. Tell us about the type of investors you’re seeing demand from. Without giving names, but maybe is it like family offices. I know it’s accredited as far as with your website list, but can you tell us a bit about that.
Anthony: Yeah, happily here’s what I would say, I would say that we are getting everything from college endowments, pension funds, union pension funds, high net worth individuals. People that I would call mass affluent that are worth two three million dollars, they want to put fifty or hundred thousand dollars in the fund. We have a fifty thousand dollar minimum, so we’ve got people doing that. We have European banks that have expressed an interest in the fund. Some of which have already invested some of which are doing their due diligence to invest. So, it’s a very eclectic mix. But remember if you understand our history at Skybridge we want to democratize things.
So, I’m trying to democratize and make accessible Bitcoin investment. Now you said, well isn’t Coinbase doing that. They are, but this is my opinion a safer way to store it and it’s a cleaner way for larger scale people to have their Bitcoin. Moreover, we’re not charging high commissions to get in because we’re operating at a wholesale level with the exchanges because of our size and scale.
Tony: Got it. So, it sounds like you’re using multiple exchanges to execute orders and you mentioned fidelity. You’re using as a custodian.
Anthony: Yes.
Tony: Got it. Are there plans to add other funds, maybe Ethereum, maybe a top 10 basket? Anything along those lines?
Anthony: That’s a really good question. So, I would say invite me back in a year, we’ll have the conversation. Because what I want to do right now is, I want to focus the energies of the firm purely on Bitcoin. Remember, we started out by saying that we’re institutionalists. So, I’m herding cats and I’m pushing on a string Tony to get institutionalists that are naysayers that don’t see what I see or perhaps what you see in Bitcoin. So, rather than stretching them into places like Ethereum or other types of coins, let’s get them focused on Bitcoin. It’s the largest market capitalized digital currency or store value. And let’s get them focused there and then let’s see if we can expand from there. I’m not saying that we won’t be open to it in the future but right now I want to stay focused on where we are.
Tony: Sure, that absolutely makes sense. I don’t want to spread yourself too thin, as it’s your point Bitcoin is emerging and that’s a good place to start. Tell me about, you know we’re in a bull market, we could potentially see a hundred thousand plus obviously but the market’s volatile. You know what are you looking at ideally not financial or investment advice of course as far as a price prediction?
Anthony: Okay, so I have to be careful right because I don’t want to sound like a lunatic. But what I said on CNBC last week that we have $100,000 price target for a year in what. Was interesting about that, the anchors like Joe Cronin were a Goss that, oh wow like a lot. And then when I looked at my twitter feed, I had all the Bitcoiners saying, ‘Why are you so bearish?’ I’m laughing at both. So, I don’t know what it will be, but if you follow plan B or stop the flow model or you look at the supply that’s out there and you look at the demand, which I think is overwhelming. It’s going to force the price up and the price should be up if I’m right that this technology is a better technology than gold or platinum or silver.
It’s portable, it’s impregnable, it’s easy to move around. You can move it around cleanly, 146 million people are already trusting in it, on its way to a billion by 2025. Well you know why, it should be worth a couple $100,000 a coin. So, I don’t know you know plan B is at $280,000 by year end, he called 55,000 by May.
Tony: Right.
Anthony: You got there a little earlier it’s come off from that. Bitcoin is volatile, I tell people please be cautious. You don’t have to be as long as I am on a percentage basis of your network but you should have one or two three percent in your exposures to Bitcoin. But I don’t know the answer, but I would be surprised if it’s not at least $100,000 by year end.
Tony: You know we’ve seen to your point of the stock the flow model; we know the having cycle and usually after bull market we go into a bear market. But this time around you got folks who are looking to huddle long term. You know Michael Saylor has talked about he’s never going to sell and things along those lines. And these companies putting on their balance sheet. Do you see maybe not as bad of a bear market as we saw in 2018, 2019 and it’s more stable moving forward?
Anthony: Well, only because you’ve got these huge macro factors now. You know in 2017 2018, that was a retail driven market. It was a boom and bust cycle coincident with that. This has got a totally different complexity to the demand for Bitcoin in 2021, add on what I said about monetary stimulus and monetary growth. You’ve got, again you know 1.9 trillion-dollar stimulus coming in there’ll be 40% more dollars in production produced in supply circulating. You’d have to be crazy not to own some inflationary based hedges. I think Bitcoin is one of them. Now push back on me and say well no it tracks the market. You know it was down in march of last year into three or four thousand, now it’s at 50,000. It just tracks the market.
Well, not really go back take a long-term view, take a 10-year view of Bitcoin. You could put 1% of your money in Bitcoin 99% of your money in cash over the last 10 years. And that portfolio one plus 99 would have outperformed. Everything stock market everything, it would have done with a high sharp ratio and very very low volatility. So, don’t look at it from a short-term point of view. Listen, here is the reason why Bitcoin is meeting resistance or one of the reasons. It sounds too good to be true. Wait a minute, I can buy this thing at 50,000 it’s gonna go to a 100,000 by the end of the year that’s ridiculous.
Bernie Madoff promised a rainbow lifetime in prison. But remember this is not Bernie Madoff, it’s not a money manager saying this. This is a decentralized network that’s scaling pursuant to that Medcast law. Moreover, what else is too good to be true, the numbers I just described for Amazon 10,021 million, Apple computer two trillion. Look at this phone, this phone is too good to be true. I have books behind me, you know I guess maybe I’m trying to impress you with the books that I’ve read so I throw them behind me. But every one of those books doesn’t need to be there, they’re all hearing this phone.
Tony: Sure.
Anthony: No, we’ve miniaturized everything this phone has become a Pacman for technological data. That book behind me or these books over here, it’s a technology. What is it? It’s a tool for reading. What is the technology? Tool, technology the understanding of tools, technology okay. What is Bitcoin? It is a technological advancement in money. And so, guess what it’s doing pursuant to Medcast law like this phone or like Amazon. Amazon ate your hardware store. It ate your fashion store, it ate your sunglass hut, it ate your bookstore. It ate them. It’s all right there on Amazon and it’s on a little tile on this phone. This phone ate your record library, your book library. It’s become a radio, a movie studio, it’s become a podcast machine both to record podcasts and to listen to them. It’s everything.
I have done television from my phone. I’ve set it up with a wireless internet hook and I’m on Zoom, the camera is actually pretty good and I can do television. I’ve created a studio where in the 1950s it would have took two floors of the RCA building. I’m doing it right here wireless from this phone, that’s Bitcoin. Bitcoin is eating and savaging the financial institutions around the world.
Tony: I want to talk a bit about all coins and some situations that are happening in the market. Are you may be up to speed on the ripple XRP lawsuit from the SEC and I want to get your thoughts on that?
Anthony: Well, I mean I think this is the problem with, I don’t want to stop because I don’t want to sound like an expert on these things. I’m just going to give you the common sense evaluation, because I think I know a lot about Bitcoin and I know a reasonable amount about cryptocurrency in general. But I’m not great on alt coins. But the ripple situation to me is an example why Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever that is or the group that that is was brilliant. Because by making it faceless and making it anonymous, no regulator can point the gun. Moreover, by making it faceless and making it anonymous there’s no microscope on the specific greed. Do you see what I mean?
Tony: Sure.
Anthony: The potentiality of corruption. You know imagine that Digi Cash made it, you know its founder was a lunatic. So, he wasn’t going to make it, but let’s say he was a smarter more reasonable guy and he cut the deal with Microsoft that it was offered. You know now all of a sudden that cash is being created by a company. There’s going to be inherent problems with that. You know just the nature of greed and the nature of corruption. So, ripple I think is a victim of that.
Tony: Yeah, absolutely and I think depending on what the outcome is for this case is going to affect a lot of all coins in the market. I have you know hopes that things are gonna go well because Gary Gensler is coming in and he’s very knowledgeable about crypto. So, hopefully that goes well.
Anthony: Yes, he he is. So, I wanna switch gears a bit and talk about salt. How that came about and what are maybe some things we can expect this year? I give, I know the pandemic we’re not in person anymore.
Tony: So, right now all we’re doing are these events on the internet, we have a channel that 12 or 13,000 people that are subscribers. But we’re getting live anywhere from 10 to 80,000 people depending on the speaker. I don’t think you could do that in a live event unless we’re doing it in a stadium somewhere, I think people would even come. So, it’s amazing that you can get this sort of scale because we’re doing them globally. We’re broadcasting them globally and people can pick or choose what they want and they can log on. So, in some ways that’s amazingly effective. The next live conference we’re scheduling for September of this year, we’re going to do it in New York. Right now, the department of health in New York says you can’t do a conference.
I’m hoping and praying that by September that tune will change as more and more people are vaccinated and the numbers are going lower. Hopefully, they continue to go lower uh and so hopefully you’ll be there. At our last conference, we had a huge crypto thing and so that was very good.
Tony: I appreciate that. So, finally here just some quick rapid-fire questions. What’s your favorite food?
Anthony: Everything, but I mean I’m a sweet eater. So, if I’m about to drop that I’m probably eating Reese’s peanut butter cups, mixed into Haagen-Dazs ice cream. Anytime sweet eater, which will always be partially fat. Okay, that’s a good question. Guy, go to the next one.
Tony: Favorite musician or band?
Anthony: Okay, partial of Billy Joel, I’m a long island guy and grew up with Billy Joel and I love Billy Joel.
Tony: Awesome. Favorite movie?
Anthony: Got to be the Godfather. You know I mean I watch a ton of movies, but the Godfather is an irreplaceable piece of art.
Tony: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s one of my go-to’s. Look you talked about quite a few books, but if there’s one you could take off your shelf that is your go-to what would it be?
Anthony: Well, there’s a couple of interesting books. You know I think that the number one book I would recommend to people is victor Frankel’s book, ‘The Meaning of Life’. I think that’s the book that everybody needs to read. Because what we do in our societies is that we opine that life is unfair and we act like victims often when things are not going our way. Here is a man Victor Frankel that survived a concentration camp and he went on to write a ‘Man’s Search for Meaning. It is a bestseller. It was written in 1946 and I think it’s probably the best book that I’ve ever read about the human condition and about the need for us to be resilient and the need for us to be in love with life. No, matter what its trials and tribulations are, and certainly he had his very large share of injustice and man’s inhumanity to man. So, I always recommend victor’s book to people.
Tony: I have to add that to my list, that sounds like a good one. Finally, when you’re not at Skybridge capital, what are you doing for fun as a hobby?
Anthony: Well, I’m actually a nerd. I mean I’m a reader, you know hang out with my kids. I ski, if it’s summertime. I’m down by the beach because I live on long island there’s water everywhere, I’m on the boat you know I’m out of my house in the Hamptons. But I’m a nerd. You know at the end of the day like even though I have this like Italian exoskeleton and I was wearing polyester when I got started. At the end of the day, I’m probably just an intellectually curious nerd when it comes down to it. Which is why I’m sitting here in between meetings reading this. Getting myself further up to speed where the future is going.
Tony: Awesome. Anthony pleasure chatting with you, learned so much. Thank you.
Anthony: Great interview Anthony, let’s do this again, I hope.
Tony: Awesome, definitely in a year.
Anthony: All right, God bless.
Tony: Take care.
