Anthony Scaramucci says he only got $400,000 back on a $10 million investment in FTX’s key coin, but says that won’t put him off crypto in the future. The investor said he had put millions into Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTT token through his fund SkyBridge Capital, but was “burned” when the coin collapsed along with the FTX crypto exchange in November.
The coin lost 91% of its value in a matter of days following allegations Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research held a significant amount of the FTT token, falling from averages around $24 to less than $1. SkyBridge received $45 million of funding from Bankman-Fried after FTX bought a 30% stake in the company, of which Scaramucci invested $10 million in FTT, before eventually selling it at a loss of $9.6 million.
Bankman-Fried was viewed as a billionaire backer of the crypto industry. He also came to the rescue of SkyBridge, which has over the past two years invested heavily in crypto under Scaramucci’s leadership. The deal Bankman-Fried and Scaramucci announced in September involved FTX Ventures paying $45mn for a 30 per cent stake in SkyBridge.
Under the terms of the agreement, SkyBridge was obliged to spend $40mn buying cryptocurrencies. Scaramucci at the time said the transaction was proof that SkyBridge had a long-term future. “If you have $50mn in liquid assets on your balance sheet, people don’t think you’re going out of business,” he told reporters in September at his Salt financial conference in New York. Still, Donald Trump’s former Director of Communications at the White House said he remained bullish on cryptocurrency, and expected that to grow as the Fed potentially eases up on its tightening campaign.
“I don’t shy away from it,” Scaramucci said. “I think it’s important for people who believe in capitalism and important for people that are risk takers to understand what happened. I’m not going to be the person that takes no more risk in the future because I got burned by Sam.”The FTT coin has seen steep gains this month from a low base alongside other “Sam Coins” backed by the FTX founder, as hopes grow that the FTX platform might be revived by administrators and amid a return of wider optimism to the market.
The coin lost 91% of its value in a matter of days following allegations Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research held a significant amount of the FTT token, falling from averages around $24 to less than $1. SkyBridge received $45 million of funding from Bankman-Fried after FTX bought a 30% stake in the company, of which Scaramucci invested $10 million in FTT, before eventually selling it at a loss of $9.6 million.
