SkyBridge Capital investment firm filed for a crypto-focused exchange-traded fund (ETF) on Tuesday and announced plans for an Algorand fund at this week’s SALT conference in New York.
Anthony Scaramucci, the founder of SkyBridge and a former White House communications director, told CNBC that the company has raised more than $100 million for the newly announced Algorand fund. He also stated that the company currently has $700 million in cryptocurrency holdings.
Scaramucci stated that “crypto is here to stay,” and that regulators must act “extremely rapidly” if they want to stop the technology’s rapid adoption.
“This is similar to Uber in that regulators sought to shut it down, but the people wanted Uber, and the people won,” he stated, adding:
“Before long, there will be 200 million [crypto] users in the United States.”
Scaramucci’s remarks come as many observers predict a regulatory crackdown led by the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States.
Despite his disagreement with SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s recent assessment of the crypto sector as “rife with fraud and abuse,” Scaramucci expressed his admiration for Gensler’s position.
“He’s got a lot of people in Congress that don’t fully understand it. There’s a lot of negativity. I would implore people like Senator Elizabeth Warren to come to a conference like this and sit with people in the industry so she can understand what the protocols actually are […] I think we’ve got to get everybody up the curve in terms of education.”
Other banking titans present at the event, however, do not share Scaramucci’s optimism about crypto adoption’s capacity to elude the grasp of overbearing rules.
Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s third-largest hedge fund, anticipated that the growing popularity of digital assets would enrage lawmakers.
“At the end of the day, if it’s truly successful, […] they’ll try to put it out of business. And I believe they will eliminate it because they have the means to do so,” he told CNBC.
Regardless of his view, Dalio lambasted currency as “garbage,” adding that all monetary instruments that offer an alternative to cash, including Bitcoin, are “worth considering” (BTC).
“I believe it is worthwhile to evaluate all of the alternatives to cash and other financial assets. Bitcoin is a viable option. He stated, “I have a specific amount of money in Bitcoin.”
On Tuesday, SkyBridge filed a crypto-focused ETF with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The First Trust SkyBridge Crypto Industry and Digital Economy ETF, if approved, would invest at least 80% of its net assets in prominent companies in the crypto industry ecosystem, but would not seek direct exposure to cryptocurrencies.
