Hello, Cointelegraph is here at Salt London. My name is Kieran, I'm your host, and today I'm joined by Anthony Scaramucci. Anthony, thanks for joining us.
Kieran, good to be here. Look, how are we? Last time in the Rosewood in Abu Dhabi. Where were we?
Yeah, in that little backstage room.
Yeah. I remember we were talking, a lot of things hadn't happened yet. I mean, the world really changed, man. Yeah. In that time, I mean, it was, you know, eight, nine months ago. December was getting better or worse, Kieran?
In my humble view, I think it's gotten worse. Yeah, yeah. What would you say?
It's gotten a little better and a little worse. Yeah. And there's some big tech coming. I think it's going to be beneficial to the world. A lot more uncertainty.
Um, what about crypto? What's your... I mean, when we talked in December, we were talking around, you know, how Trump was a net negative for crypto back then. And that was before the setback with the Clarity Act we've had recently.
You know, at least I'm consistent. I said he was a net negative. I explained why and said the Clarity Act won't get done because of him. And look at where we are now. You know, everything I said unfolded. I mean, I'm not trying to pat myself on the back because trust me, I've gotten millions of things wrong in my career as well. But what you can't do is launch a meme coin as president of the United States, two meme coins three days before the inauguration, and rug pull people for, uh, where the people lose $4.8 billion and you and your family make $700 million. Okay. I don't know who thought that was a good idea, but it's not.
Do you think that was the sole reason why the Clarity Act didn't go through?
Um, singular reason. I think that there was great momentum coming out of the '24 election. And I think a lot of Democrats looked around, particularly the younger Democrats, and said, I don't want to be on the wrong side of this anymore. And the technology is there. And they were getting more comfortable with people like Chris Giancarlo, who's a very astute regulator, explaining the prowess of the technology. But when Trump did the rug pull, they looked around and said, okay, we're not going to vote for it. And remember, it was an adversary. Remember, your adversary doesn't have to be in the same lane of contention. If you're threatening Greenland and the Democrats don't like you threatening Greenland, they'll say, okay, we're not going to vote for the Clarity, and they don't have to be in the same lane. It can be just the periphery as well.
And I guess, you know, a lot of people had concerns about Trump's business interests in crypto as well. I mean, how much do you think that had to do with just, I guess, the Clarity Act, like you said before, the meme coins, but...
I think it's the business interests, the meme coins. And then of course, remember they were trying to put real teeth into the ethics provision. Yeah. And ultimately, the president and the White House didn't want to sign that ethics provision. So, you know, each side is blaming the other side, but there's culpability on both sides for that deal not going through.
And if there's one question I guess you could ask Trump now about his crypto business dealings, what would it be?
What does Putin have on you? That's the only question I want to ask Trump. And he's got to be like Jim Carrey in Liar Liar, where he's got to tell me the truth. That's the only question I want answered.
Do you think he actually understands crypto? Do you think he actually understands the fundamentals, the investing?
I think, listen, I don't underestimate President Trump's intelligence. I think he is up to speed in a common sense way. I don't think he's read the white paper. I don't think he understands the technical aspects of the blockchain. I don't think he understands the whole process around tokenizing a real world asset or why the coin Bitcoin, this token, will ultimately be a digital store of value or like digital gold of the future. That he probably doesn't understand natively. I think he generally gets it. And again, I would never disrespect him by suggesting he's not intelligent. He just has a different form of intelligence relative to other people. He's not a book-read guy, but he's very natively intelligent.
Now, obviously the Binance hack happened early last week as well, $6.3 billion, largest hack in crypto history. Yeah. As well. Now you're a Wall Street guy. You've got plenty of Wall Street mates in high up positions. What do you think their thoughts are now to crypto seeing something like this, a multi-billion dollar hack? Do you think that scares them and almost makes them think, you know what, I'm gonna, you know, reconsider digital assets?
I think it would be naive to think on the margin it doesn't scare people, particularly older people. But I think the flip side of it is, uh, a company like Binance could make good quickly on a $6.3 billion hack. And you and I both know that maybe half of those assets are frozen now. Yeah. And so there's a chance for retrieval on at least those assets. It'll probably be three, $3.5 billion of damage to Binance. But just think about how quickly and how professionally they absorb that and how quickly they restarted their withdrawals once they figured out everything and got their security protocols tight. And just to remind people, uh, when you really understand it, most of the stuff is in cold wallet storage, so it's not hackable. When it goes hot, that's where you have the opportunity to hack something. And in this case, that's probably the amount of money, 6.3 billion, that they need daily for this sort of transactions that are moving back and forth on the Binance Exchange. And so it's a painful hack. I'm not saying it isn't, but just think of the professionalism of Binance. Think of the communication of Binance. Uh, weirdly, you could get great comfort in that and the maturing of the crypto market to be able to absorb a disastrous situation like that.
