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There's no business like small business. Hiscox Small Business Insurance. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. Joining us now to talk about this ETF, I'm thrilled to say we have Anthony Scaramucci. He is the founder of SkyBridge Capital. Joining us on set. Great to see you in person. I mean, Eric, I mean, I was almost as good as my mother writing the thing. I mean, that was really good. He does his homework and we have a lot of
questions for you about the crypto industry at large, but we are going to start with this product because as Eric described it, this is sort of a thematic crypto ETF that tracks equities and you do have a lot of these sort of products out there that say that they track the digital asset ecosystem and that are also actively managed. So how do you differentiate this product from the rest of the field?
Well, first of all, thank you guys for having me and I appreciate being here. I would just say to you that this was born from a non-Bitcoin exchange traded fund world. So remember, this is four years ago, trying to get our clients access to something that correlates with Bitcoin.
I would make the case that there are still clients out there, particularly at these wire houses, that are having a hard time getting approval on Bitcoin still to this day. And so the case for this is this is a good surrogate. If you want to be in Bitcoin, certainly go out and buy Bitcoin. If you can buy the Bitcoin shares, whether it's the Fidelity ones or Galaxy Invesco or the BlackRock one, certainly would recommend that.
But if you can't do that and you want some exposure to the ecosystem, you want some exposure to great companies inside the ecosystem, I think we have the best story to tell and arguably the best performance, if you don't mind me saying that, just based on the metrics that Bloomberg is showing. In looking at the holdings, you have two U.S. companies as the biggest holdings, MicroStrategy and Coinbase. But then you've got Galaxy Digital, which is listed in Toronto, and MetaPlanet, which trades in Japan. So you now have currency exposure as well. Why go this route?
Well, because again, the meta planet is sort of a pure play in Bitcoin. And so even though we have modest currency exposure, we like that. I guess if you look at that list, I think the thing that our investment managers are saying at Skybridge, what's going to get us the most correlation to Bitcoin without taking on too much exogenous risk? So the currency and the sizing of that is not overly consequential to us. As it relates to Galaxy, I think you know this, Galaxy is about to list
on the NASDAQ and so I think that'll be helpful there. But we're big fans of Mike Novogratz, worked with Mike at Goldman 30 years ago and like that company overall. So the brokerage component of this I think does help. Coinbase and Galaxy are companies that we think are highway systems in the world of digital assets. So it's not just a pure play on the assets themselves. You're getting a little pick up on the infrastructure.
Let's talk a little bit about like the future and where bitcoins going I was on stage with Robbie Michnik in Dubai He said when the decoupling happened that day where Bitcoin went up and the stocks went down There was a couple days like that was major. He got calls from some big fish and they were like finally it's acting like gold how important is Bitcoin to behave a little better and not be a high beta stock and
for it to really go to the next level with corporations, governments, and institutions. Well, I think that's it, Eric. Ultimately, what we see is the evolution of Bitcoin from being sort of a tech asset tied to the Mag7 or tied to the NASDAQ to something that's more akin to digital gold. And as that starts to happen,
And I believe that will happen as wallets expand. You know, let's say there's roughly 300 million or so wallets for Bitcoin right now. Imagine a world where there's a billion wallets, a billion holders. The volatility should dampen. That happened in Microsoft. That happened in things like Google over a 20-year period of time. And so you could see a scenario where more wallets, lots of institutions in the mix, long-term holders expand.
dampening volatility. And then you have this positive flywheel where the volatility is dampened by long term holders who are owning it in size. And so therefore, that reinforces the idea that other long term holders should come in. I guess the big thing you have to ask yourself, is Bitcoin an investment?
Or is it an asset class? If it's an investment, then $1 to $3 trillion, that sort of makes sense. That's akin to a MAG-7 market capitalization. But if it's an asset class, then it should trade to closer to where gold is. And I think gold is, I don't know, $22, $23 trillion right now.
I do want to bring in politics and regulation to this conversation because there's stablecoin legislation working its way through Congress right now. And I want to hear your thoughts on why that potentially is important and whether or not that should include restrictions on the Trump family and the administration broadly.
Well, I don't know if you can restrict one family. And so I don't know what the laws are, even if that's allowable in the Constitution. But I just I think what we have to do is we've got to get stablecoin legislation through because it'll help the digital asset space. It'll help the United States maintain its mantle of financial stability.
leadership, financial services leadership. But I think the other thing stablecoins do is just a reminder to people, whether it's Circle or Tether, they own a ton of US treasuries. I think Tether now owns more US treasuries than Germany and Japan. And I think we want to have
this legislation provide great clarity, regulatory specificity, so that we've got a lot of players in the mix. Eventually, banks can get into the mix. And eventually, I could hold my Bitcoin at a bank. As it relates to the Trump family, I guess what I would say, my message to the Trump family would be,
you know, be transparent. You know, if you're not doing anything wrong, let's, I'll accept on faith that you're not doing anything wrong, but be transparent because we're in a partisan tribal environment and you got to let people know exactly what you're doing. Otherwise, people are going to assume the worst. Right. There are a lot of people, some in the industry, who are concerned that the First Family's involvement in crypto is a way to just make money. What is your level of confidence that this administration, both at the executive and regulatory level, is serious about supporting the build-out of the U.S. crypto industry?
Well, I think it's very serious. I think this is the thing, a lot of the, what do we call it, the crypto bros, if you will. There's probably women in there, but let's call them crypto bros. I think they moved into fair shake and they gave a lot of money to Republicans or some Democrats that are supportive and
And I think in the beginning, I would say he was skeptical and probably politically driven. But I think as people learn the story, they recognize that this is going to be a large component to the future of finance. And so I do think it's serious today. Was it serious in July of last year when they spoke at the Bitcoin conference?
Probably not. It was probably political, but I think it's serious today. Okay, 45 seconds. You obviously are into Bitcoin. Any of the altcoins excite you? We're going to see ETFs for XRP, Solana, Ether. People are going to have a lot of choice. What do you think about those? Well, I would focus on Solana for right now because you have an ETF out there. It's SolQ, S-O-L-Q.
Those guys at 3iQ were the first to launch a Bitcoin ETF in North America, the first Canadian ETF. We own a lot of Solana, just full disclosure. And again, full disclosure, we at SkyBridge are investors in SolQ because we like that exposure. We also like the staking component.
to Solana, which you think is very good. So it's just a great way to get in there. Those other ones are going to be good, Avalanche, Polkadot, et cetera, but Solana. All right, got to leave it there. Really appreciate you taking the time. That is Anthony Scaramucci of SkyBridge Capital. You can read about this drill down plus the latest in the ETF industry when you subscribe to my weekly ETF IQ newsletter. But that does it for us. This is Bloomberg.
Hiscox Small Business Insurance knows there is no business like your business. Across America, over 600,000 small businesses, from accountants and architects to photographers and yoga instructors, look to Hiscox Insurance for protection. Find flexible coverage that adapts to the needs of your small business with a fast, easy online quote at Hiscox.com. That's H-I-S-C-O-X dot com.
There's no business like small business. Hiscox Small Business Insurance. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.