Bitcoin‘s continued rise in popularity and valuation has made it impossible to ignore the cryptocurrency asset for both, retail and institutional investors alike. For those that are still apprehensive, hedge fund manager Anthony Scaramucci has some advice.
Speaking to CNBC, the founder of SkyBridge Capital argued that anyone that does their due diligence regarding the digital asset carefully, would understand and believe in its potential. He asked people to “do the homework on bitcoin, understand what it is,” adding that Bitcoin’s white paper written by its creator Satoshi Nakamoto would be a great place to start.
Naming bigwigs like Paul Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller who have also bought bitcoin, he said,
“Anybody that does the homework … ends up investing into it. Look at Ray Dalio, a bitcoin skeptic, now a bitcoin investor… These are brilliant guys [who] did the homework and drew a conclusion that they needed to own a piece of Bitcoin.”
Like many, Scaramucci likened the virtual currency to “digital gold”, revealing that he himself owned “over $1 billion” in Bitcoin. The investor had started to accumulate Bitcoin last year, around the same that his firm filed for a Bitcoin investment fund with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
Recently, his firm filed an application for a crypto ETF which would be called “First Trust SkyBridge Crypto Industry and Digital Economy ETF.” It would invest 80% of its net assets into companies working within the crypto-industry and digital economy, while not providing direct exposure to Bitcoin.
While talking about his own BTC investments, Scaramucci stated in the interview,
“If you had one cent in bitcoin and 99 cents in cash over the last decade, you outperformed everything. Just think about that.”
‘Bitcoin is a giant asset class’
Scaramucci believes that Bitcoin is a “giant asset class” that will have a big position in the global economy over the next decade. In a recent interview with Anthony Pompliano, the billionaire had even called Bitcoin the best trade of his life, due to the sheer appreciation of value it has seen over the past year.
After a difficult few months that saw many investors pulling out of the Bitcoin market due to an extended bear run, the asset is once again seeing greener days. It was priced at $63,141 at the time of writing, following the successful launch of the first BTC ETF in the US that led the asset to reach a new all-time high of more than $66,900 last week.
Ray Dalio, mentioned by Scaramucci as being a Bitcoin flipper, is part of a growing group of institutional investors that have started to discredit their staunch criticism of the cryptocurrency.
Among them is Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary, who can regularly be seen publically praising Bitcoin, while also increasing his holdings. He had recently revealed that he now owned more BTC than gold, as many investors have started to view Bitcoin as the new world’s “digital gold” and a better replacement for the ancient asset.
