SkyBridge Capital chief executive Anthony Scaramucci says crypto is on the verge of unleashing a “wave of economic innovation.”
In a new interview at the Blockchain Hub Davos 2023 event, Scaramucci says people shouldn’t give up on crypto just because of the high-profile collapse of crypto exchange FTX and the criticism of the industry that the debacle brought.
Scaramucci says he feels betrayed by former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who took out a 30% stake in SkyBridge just months before its collapse. However, Scaramucci says that setback has done nothing to dampen his outlook on cryptocurrencies.
“The betrayal and the fraud, it’s bad on a lot of different levels. It certainly hurt [my reputation], but I’m just talking about the visceral relationship with somebody…
And so when you have a friend that betrays you like that, it really sucks, but that doesn’t mean it’s the end of blockchain or crypto. That’s why we have blockchain and crypto because we’re trying to create a decentralized situation where we don’t have to like or trust each other.”
Scaramucci predicts that out of the tens of thousands of blockchain projects, only a few will ultimately survive. In the end, he says the technology will see widespread adoption.
“There will likely be three or four cryptocurrencies that survive. Maybe it’s 10. It’s not going to be 20,000, I don’t think, but maybe I’m wrong.
What is the blockchain? It’s this wonderful delayering mechanism that’s going to take middlemen and middlewomen, intermediaries, out of our transactions. And if that happens, it’s going to unleash a wave of economic innovation, technological and otherwise. And so at the end of the day, I’m committed to that.”
He likens today’s state of crypto to the dot com era that ushered in a massive wave of successful tech companies after an initial bubble crash.
“I can’t predict the future, but I can observe the past. And I can tell you that’s where we are with the blockchain. We’re in 1998 for the blockchain. And as this thing evolves, and as these use cases develop, people are going to be like, Why did I miss that? Why did I let the media scare me out of that? Why did I let Sam Bankman-Fried scare me out of that? Why did I let that cycle of volatility scare me out of that growth?”
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