Bitcoin to me is still a global asset with a global brand, and you're probably in the late stages of the four-year cycle now. By October, I think you'll see the prices rallying again. This is one of the rare examples of technology that gets adapted by retail investors, and then the retail investors sort of force the conversation into the institutions. So I think that's where things are smashing into each other right now. But I believe that good technology eventually gets adopted. But the president, by being involved in the space, has created this sort of Duraflame log of activity burning very brightly against him and the people in the industry. I want to be wrong about it, but I know Washington...
...and you know the political consequences.
I got my 11-day PhD in how Washington works, and I'm just telling you it's going to be hard to do. I hope it happens.
All right, we're here with Anthony Scaramucci. Anthony, sir, it's good to see you.
Hey, congratulations on everything, Zack.
Thank you for inviting us here on behalf of the Coinage community. Excited to be a media partner this year. Excited to sit down with you. A lot to talk about, obviously.
Your first time in Jackson?
This is my first time in Wyoming, the whole entire state.
This is awesome, man. I can see why you've been cooking it here for a while.
It's very nice. And obviously the people here, the conversations here have been very exciting as well because I think we're at a time, and maybe you foresaw this coming, in terms of crypto and TradFi colliding now and what it unlocks. It's a very different cycle.
Well, listen, I don't want to take credit for John Darsie, who I think you know is the CEO of SALT. He does a beautiful job organizing, putting this stuff together. He wanted to create a conference that was somewhat adjacent to the central banking conference, the Federal Reserve Conference, which is down the road from here next week. And so his attitude was, "Okay, they have a central banking conference. Let's have a decentral banking conference and let's put it in Wyoming." And it was a smart idea because we got some of the Fed governors, Paul Atkins, we've got the CFTC chair, we got a whole host of different people where that TradFi-DeFi crossover is happening here at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium. So that was pretty cool. I think it was a great idea by him.
It is. And it's also a combination of politics as well. And you got a new book coming out kind of highlighting some of the elements of populism and mistakes along the way, which I definitely want to get into. But maybe we just kind of kick off with what you're witnessing as Wall Street, politicians, regulations finally collide in this moment, because from where I sit, it's almost like crypto had represented this life raft for a lot of people who felt like the system wasn't working for them. It's kind of an interesting moment in time to start to see some of the elements get co-opted maybe from Wall Street.
Yeah. Well, listen, I mean this is one of the rare examples of technology that gets adapted by retail investors, and then the retail investors sort of forced the conversation into the institutions. And I think the reason that happened really had to do with Dodd-Frank, I think it had to do with Sarbanes-Oxley. If you really chronicle the last 25 years of financial services regulation, it's gotten very tough, it's very sticky, particularly after the global financial crisis. So these guys, they're locked into a certain system. If you want to bring in new technology that makes a system better, they're going to be very resistant to that. Of course, they have the money to spend in Washington to push their agenda vis-a-vis the system.
So I think that's where things are smashing into each other right now. But I believe that good technology, or at least technology that's better than the prior technologies, eventually gets adopted. So that's a runaway train that's going to happen whether people like it or not. But you're raising the right issue because you would have said, "Okay, Bitcoin is a libertarian asset. It's for the libertarians." And now one of the largest holders of Bitcoin is BlackRock and their IBIT, their BlackRock ETF. So there is a sort of crossover happening, but I still think there's lots of libertarian elements of Bitcoin and other assets in this space.
For sure. And obviously, you've been very outspoken about the need to get clarity done, the CLARITY Act now in DC, and we're seeing another push for this. And it's kind of a similar situation where rules are getting rewritten and power is just kind of changing around in terms of who capitalizes on this. I think I've seen you talk about the moment being critically important in terms of America keeping up with the rest of the world right now, but you're also equally just as critical of President Trump and his crypto dealings. So kind of how do you square that?
Well, it's funny because I was on a World Economic Forum panel in January of 2025, and I was the only non-public CEO. So when you're a non-public CEO, you say whatever the hell you want, right? What are they going to say to me, right? And I'm not going to mention the guys I was on the panel with because it'll probably upset them, but they all said to me afterwards, "Well, I couldn't say that, but I'm glad you were on the panel to say that."
And I said in January 2025, the president launching a memecoin three days before his inauguration and rug pulling $600, $700, $800 million for himself out of a memecoin that's now crashed down 99% in value is a sore spot for a lot of people, and it's a sore spot for his adversaries. So when you're trying to get something passed like CLARITY and you oppose the president, one of the sore spots is, "Well, he's made all this money off of crypto." They think it's unfair. They think it was self-dealing by the president of the United States. And so they put this massive ethics provision into the deal, which has slowed down the deal and possibly even extinguished it.
So to me, the president has been good for crypto—I try to be very objective—but he's also been bad for crypto. He's been good: Atkins is great, Republicans are back in power, they're pro-crypto, we've ended the Gensler era, which I thought was terrible. But the president, by being involved in the space, has created this sort of Duraflame log of activity burning very brightly against him and the people in the industry. So we'll see what happens.
But if you're telling me—and I don't want to be overly skeptical, I'm generally an optimist—but we've got the Congress coming back, we'll have seven weeks to pass a massive piece of legislation where more hours have been spent on this legislation than Dodd-Frank, the legislation after the global financial crisis. And you're telling me they're going to put this together in seven weeks and pass it and be right up that close to the midterms? I'm not buying that. I don't see that happening. Now, if it happens, I really want to be wrong. Hopefully, you'll invite me back. You'll dunk me in the public square, you know? Like remember those dunking mechanisms? I want to be wrong about it, but I know Washington...
...and you know the political consequences.
I got my 11-day PhD in how Washington works, and I'm just telling you it's going to be hard to do. I hope it happens.
Yeah. It does seem very tricky, and each day we kind of get a little bit of a trickle of new Trump dealings in crypto coming out, which makes the hill to climb, if you're a Democrat specifically, very hard.
Yeah. But in terms of the other side of the coin, which is we did get GENIUS passed and we did see rules, and even SEC Commissioner Peirce comes on Coinage all the time and says there are plenty of levers to pull in terms of even if CLARITY doesn't pass, there are rules we can make, there are things that can be put in place. How important is that really, though, in terms of the fact that a lot of people have come around?
Well, she's leaving out—I love her, she's been in so many ways one of the big innovators from a regulatory perspective. I think if someone ever writes the regulatory adoption history story, she'll be one of the great leaders, and I love her. But she left out one word: impermanent. Because remember, I can be the SEC chair and I can more or less create the CLARITY Act from my interpretation of current regs. I can do that, and the judges will probably give me enough latitude for me to do that. But that's impermanent because the next guy that comes in can sweep all of that out.
The reason why you were trying to get this done in CLARITY—it's a beautifully named act, right?—because we're trying to provide regulatory clarity that is immovable from the left or the right. Here are the guidelines, the judges have legislation that was passed by the Congress, signed by the president. And so, man, that's an airtight thing, and that then opens up the horizon.
And so the dysfunction in Washington is troubling because how do you plan your business on impermanent regulation? How do you plan your business with the notion that Gary Gensler could return to the business in 2029 and wreak havoc on you? What they're making a big mistake about is they have to think about American businesses. As you know, as an entrepreneur, it takes 10 years to build a business. How am I going to build a business with regulatory uncertainty? So they're doing the American people a disservice, frankly.
Well, that's why it's been interesting to come out here in Wyoming and see a lot of experiments popping up, kind of trying to go state by state or different charters, or Coinage, for what we've built in terms of the Colorado co-op and different—it shouldn't be this complicated, I will agree. It shouldn't be this hard.
Yeah, and it holds back a lot of things. But...
You could not start SkyBridge today. I left Lehman Brothers. I had sold my first business to Neuberger Berman, which was acquired by Lehman Brothers, and I was able to leave Lehman. I got Dick Fuld to help me, gave me some money for my firm. I started SkyBridge with four people in a small little hedge fund hotel room. It was like this big. We had a shared conference room with other hedge fund managers. I could not do that today. The first nine people that I would need to hire at SkyBridge are lawyers.
The regulations helped me because it's prevented competition, okay? But it's not helping the society. We have to think about it in a better way. This is a hand-up country, this is not a handout country, okay? And so I'm sure that the smarter people will retake that narrative from a political perspective.
Well, I almost feel like that's the piece too. And just before we sat down, we were talking about what things will look like in that next administration. Obviously, no one really knows which way that'll swing. No one even knows who might run on the Democratic side as well, who their original candidate might be.
Let me tell you, we're in an anti-incumbency mood, okay? Obama got taken out by Trump, Trump got taken out by Biden, Biden got taken out by Trump. It's like, throw the bums out. By the way, if they could take out both parties, they would. But we're stuck in this two-party system. Remember, the highest level of registrations are independents now. They fled both parties. Which is why if you open the primaries, that would be a very interesting thing to do everywhere, because you'd liquidate some of the extremism that's going on in the society.
Yeah. Before I get into who you think might run for each one of these parties coming up, is there any chance that you would ever kind of run? I mean, we're in the land of moose. Could there be a Bull Moose? Could there be a Scaramucci...
Could there be an independent...
Well, listen, I'm running for re-election in my marriage. I'm trying to stay married, okay? My wife believes in castration, which I don't believe in as a platform. That's not something I want to do. I don't think I'm well suited for it because what makes me a good guest for you is I'm going to tell you the truth. You go into politics, you got to start lying to everybody and you got to start saying stuff that doesn't make sense to people.
Trump is great at it. Jeb Bush—I worked for Bush before Trump—and he was up in New Hampshire telling people, "Yeah, okay, look, I got to apply some fiscal discipline. We got a huge deficit. We got to cut the deficit. You're not going to like hearing this: I'm going to raise your taxes." Trump got to the same group of people: "I'm going to balance the budget in four years, and I'm going to return a dividend to you with the surplus." He's created 22% of the national debt that the country has in six years. So you have to understand people want to be lied to. I'm not a great liar, and so I don't see myself doing it. But I sort of weirdly take it as a compliment that you'd want me to do it, you know.
Well, I think that's the interesting thing is that you might be the most commonly cited example of someone who can be objective, understand the technology, understand how it could and will change society, and then kind of be the face of the movement. But also you're the industry's kind of...
