From Wolf of Wall Street to Bitcoin Missionary: The founder of Bridgewater Capital warns of the sweet trap of the Trump effect.

Anthony Scaramucci, founder of Skybridge Capital, and Anthony Pompliano, a well-known opinion leader in the field of finance and blockchain, recently held a conversation in which Scaramucci shared his journey of leading the company’s transformation to embrace Bitcoin, his complex views on Trump’s return to the White House, and his insights into the current cryptocurrency regulatory and political landscape. (Synopsis: The founder of Skybridge Capital broke the news: The Senate will approve the Bitcoin reserve plan!) But the chance of buying 1 million coins is low) (Background supplement: Skybridge Capital founder warns: friendly crypto regulation will not start overnight after Trump takes office, that is not how Washington operates) SkyBridge Capital, a well-known hedge fund in the United States, chose to include bitcoin in its portfolio in 2020, becoming one of the first traditional financial companies to embrace cryptocurrencies. Recently, Anthony Scaramucci, founder of Skybridge Capital, and Anthony Pompliano, a well-known opinion leader in the field of finance and blockchain, held a conversation to share his journey of leading the company’s transformation to embrace Bitcoin, his complex views on Trump’s return to the White House, and his insights into the current cryptocurrency regulatory and political landscape. The following section summarizes the essence of this conversation for readers: Desperate Survival: Skybridge Capital’s Bitcoin Transformation Road At the beginning of the interview, Scaramucci asked “Why did Skybridge Capital transform to digital assets?” This question responds. He said that as Anthony Pompliano said, SkyBridge’s original model, like the “typewriter business”, gradually declined under the trend of customers increasingly inclined to direct investment and fund companies’ own marketing capabilities, so in the face of the situation of “not dying or adapting”, SkyBridge must find a new way out. Scaramucci recalls that they realized that the layers of fees in the traditional model were no longer favored by clients and had to move to a fund structure with lower fees; At the same time, they are looking for emerging opportunities at the macro level that can benefit both customers and the company itself. That’s when Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies came into his sights: we added Bitcoin to our portfolio in October 2020, a highly controversial decision. At the time, SkyBridge managed approximately $3 billion in assets, about 10% of which were partners’ own funds, meaning their interests were closely aligned with clients. However, the decision angered many clients, especially institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals accustomed to the traditional financial system. The market was volatile, and investors rated Scaramucci and SkyBridge like a roller coaster: In 2021, as the price of Bitcoin soared, customers called to praise them as “geniuses”. In the bear market of 2022, the same customers called again, denouncing them as “idiots”. Scaramucci smiled bitterly: “We went from geniuses to idiots like this.” To make matters worse, at the end of 2022, a harshly worded, “financial obituary-like” negative story hit SkyBridge hard, resulting in a large number of customer losses. Scaramucci admitted: “That was probably the lowest point of our business.” Fortunately, the end result turned out to be the right choice, and SkyBridge’s business then rebounded roughly three times from the trough, and the transformation ultimately paid off handsomely for those customers who chose to stay, as well as the company’s own funds. Scaramucci also commented on the company’s business transformation and experience, saying that this transformation is not an easy task, as a veteran of 36 years on Wall Street, the process of embracing emerging assets such as bitcoin is full of challenges and pains: On the surface, the route seems clear, but we have experienced a lot of loss of customer base. When we do that, I feel like I’m the face of ‘rat poison square’, which doesn’t taste good." Note: There were many doubts about Bitcoin in the mainstream financial community at the time, such as JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon called Bitcoin a “decentralized Ponzi scheme”, Warren Buffett called it “rat poison”, and the late Charlie Munger called it “rat poison squared”. The “buffet” of Trump’s return: the bullish and macro risks of cryptocurrencies After talking about Skybridge Capital’s Bitcoin transformation, the topic of the interview turned to American politics, especially the possible impact of US President Trump on the cryptocurrency space. For Trump’s return, Scaramucci, the “shortest-serving White House official in history” who served as White House communications director for 11 days in Trump’s first term in 2017, first said: Choosing Trump is like facing a whole buffet table. He explained that you might like certain dishes on the buffet, such as deregulation in favor of cryptocurrencies, an end to a possible “stranglehold 2.0” for the crypto industry, or restrictions on state and local income tax deductions. However, you also have to accept the whole table – which also means you may get other things you don’t want at the same time. Scaramucci referred to Trump’s launch of his own official meme coin, saying bluntly that “probably just 48 hours before someone became a leader of the free world, a meme coin named after him was issued, and then he and his cronies took $500 million from it.” In addition to this potential risk of scandal, Scaramucci also mentioned Trump’s controversial rhetoric and actions in the past, such as suggesting that Canada became the 51st state of the United States, discussing buying Greenland, renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, publicly rebuking Western allies, and the recent treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. Scaramucci believes that Trump’s “America First” strategy and isolationist tendencies pose a threat to the liberal order in the United States and the world from a macro perspective. He believes that the role of the United States in the world over the past 80 years, although imperfect, has generally been to support global common development, improve living standards, and even accept some trade asymmetries to support other liberal democracies: Our country has 4% of the world’s population but contributes 26% of global GDP. If this ideal-built and diverse nation were to retreat from the world stage now, thinking that it would be good for America and its future, it would be absolutely failing to study history, to understand the driving forces of history. Finally, Scaramucci acknowledged that Trump may have cryptocurrency-friendly people on his team, which is good for the industry in the short term, but he strongly urged people to think about the long-term dangers that this macro shift could bring, and he was more concerned about the overall direction of the country: I should probably send Trump a Christmas card, and my bitcoin went from $69,000 to around $85,000. But frankly speaking, Trump is where he is today in large part due to the chaos of the Democratic Party itself. The Democratic Party’s Dilemma and the Political Power of Cryptocurrencies Finally, for the defeat of the Democratic Party in the face of the Trump camp, Scaramucci unceremoniously criticized their missteps on the cryptocurrency issue. He argues that Democrats need to engage in “radical moderation” (rad…