Anthony Scaramucci - Bitcoin To $200K? Crypto, Trump & The New Financial Order

Full transcript: Anthony Scaramucci on London Real

2:54 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Anthony Scaramucci, the hedge fund founder, Bitcoin advocate, former White House communications director, and host of The Rest Is Politics US, who has become one of the most influential voices driving institutional adoption of digital assets. You are the founder of SkyBridge Capital, where you’ve made one of the most aggressive pivots on Wall Street from traditional finance into Bitcoin, digital asset infrastructure and tokenized investment vehicles.

3:22 In recent months, you projected Bitcoin accelerating towards 180- 200,000. Warned that the US crackdown on crypto is a historic mistake, and that politicians are now scrambling to catch up as digital assets move towards a multi-trillion dollar global economy. You’ve also made headlines for backing major new Bitcoin mining and infrastructure plays, calling the AI revolution Wall Street’s blind spot, and arguing that we are entering a new era where Bitcoin, AI, and political disruption will redefine wealth creation.

3:53 Anthony, welcome back to London Real.

3:55 Oh, I mean, it’s first of all, such a generous introduction. Thank you. But secondarily, I love coming on your show. So when my assistant said that Brian Rose wants you back, I’m like, I want to be back there. So thank you.

4:09 Look, it’s great to have you. I saw you a year ago, I think in Singapore at Solana Breakpoint, and of course we had you here back in ’19 and then we were there all in between. I think we both kind of ventured into crypto independently and then when I heard about it, I felt like we had a lot more to talk about. So man, so much to talk about today. First of all, we haven’t spoke since the election, so I wanted to just give you a moment, maybe, to apologize for backing the Democratic party and that atrocious candidate.

4:40 All right. Well, listen, Trump is the president. He’s my president. I don’t know if you’re still US citizen, but he’s your president. And so, for me, you know, I want him to do well.

4:50 Okay. I criticized him because I thought there would be some reckless behavior. I’m not in love with the tariffs. I’m happy to explain why. I’m also happy to explain the economic data associated with our current slowdown that’s directly related to them.

5:04 I am in love with the crypto regulation. You know, I would have chosen him over her objectively despite my personal angst with Donald Trump. But he’s the president. You guys won. I lost.

5:19 I’m a gentleman. I wished him well. And you did mention that I’m an investor in these crypto miners. Eric and Don and I have a close relationship. I had Eric Trump at my crypto conference in Wyoming in August.

5:35 I interviewed Eric on stage. My family put a lot of money into Eric’s business. This American Bitcoin miner, the symbol is ABTC. So, I’m not letting the politics get in the way of the business. But if you’re saying that I got it wrong, he won and she lost.

5:53 I got it wrong. I got my comeuppance. But as I teased Eric, Brian, both Eric and I were two for three in the last three elections because I was Trump, Biden, Harris. So I was two for three. He was Trump, Trump, Trump.

6:09 So we’re here now. I think the president, frankly, is doing an okay job. I just don’t love the tariffs, you know, and I’m. And again, if you want me to go into that, I’m happy to explain why.

6:23 I mean, he’s like 300 days in. I mean, how would you rate it so far? I mean, out of 10, he’s more than a five, right?

6:30 Yeah. No, I would say he gets a six and a half, seven on lots of things. So, let’s talk about the stuff he’s done great because I think we want to be fair and objective to him. He has effectively shut down the southern border of the United States. And so, that has caused great lower and middle class angst in the country.

6:48 It isn’t about xenonophobia for these people. It’s about protecting their jobs and protecting the welfare safety net. And so, I’ll, I’ll quote a conservative economist to you, Milton Friedman, who’s no longer with us, but he won the Nobel Prize. He once said that you have to protect your border if you live in a welfare state. The United States does have a safety net.

7:09 We have elements of welfare in our society. So guess what would happen? Free market forces would dictate, Brian, that people would come across the border to participate in the welfare state. And in order to be fair to your citizens, you have to protect the border. And I’ll say something I agree with President Trump on.

7:28 He says he’s for legal immigration. He’s against illegal immigration. And so I think if you have a brain and you have some level of common sense, you have to agree with him on that. You know, the fact that the Biden administration opened the border and 10 to 12 million people flooded over the border, I think was a, it was a big campaign issue. And by the way, president’s a very good campaigner.

7:54 He campaigned on one message and one message only, and that was the border. There was other facets to it, but that was the border. So, he gets an A+ on that. I think on the general direction of regulation he gets an A minus on that. I think he and his team understand that we have to propitiously and effectively regulate crypto.

8:17 We have to provide some slack in the banking system to allow these banks to grow and to protect, you know, protect consumers but also allow the banks to grow. I think he’s done a good job on the energy space in terms of understanding what our energy needs are and how to make sure that we become more energy independent relative to potentially some rogue nation states that may be our adversaries. And I think he’s done a good job of knocking on the door of Europe and saying, “Hey, you’ve got to up your defense expenditure.

8:46 You can’t be overly relying on us.” Okay, so those are in the, you know, a minus B+ category. But when you get to the tariffs, Brian, I don’t agree with the tariffs. I’m giving him a C minus on that because the tariffs are being done indiscriminately. He’s coming down on April 2nd like Orange Moses from Mount Sinai with the tablet, and he’s presenting this tablet that is very hard to understand and he’s operating off of his emotions more than what is practical for the US economy.

9:19 So if he’s upset with Mark Carney, he’s going to blast him with higher tariffs. If he gets into a fight with the president of Switzerland, they’re stuck for the first 6 months at 39% tariffs. If he doesn’t like President Lula, but he likes President Bolsonaro, he sticks 50% tariffs on Brazil. Bessent and his economic team go to him and say, you know, Mr. President, they’re making a lot of things in Brazil that we’re importing that we don’t make here in the United States.

9:47 All you’re doing is raising prices for the American consumer. I’ll just give you flat examples. 50% tariff in Brazil.

10:57 United States, we had a 22% price increase in coffee. Now, last week, the president and his team relaxed all the food tariffs. And so they’re just nonsensical. So we have this emotional thing going on. If you want to tell me that the trading system needs to be right-sized, and you want to tell me that we need surgical application of tariffs to protect US workers or US markets, yes, I’m all for that.

11:28 I get that. Robert Lighthizer, the former US trade representative in his book, No Trade is Free, does a very good explanation of why we have to have some tariffs and some light protectionism, but I don’t think we need to have this emotional thing going on. So, that’s how I would grade the president. If you want to talk about Ukraine and stuff, he gets an A+ on getting the hostages out of Gaza. A+ on that.

11:54 Deserves credit for that. I think the Ukraine thing, I think, is an incomplete I give him credit for trying to end the war. I certainly want Europe and the freedoms that you enjoy in the UK and freedoms that are being enjoyed in Western Europe to be protected. I don’t want European nations to fall back behind the Iron Curtain. I certainly don’t want that.

12:18 So, we’ll have to see how this peace deal manifests itself in the Ukraine. I’m sorry. Go ahead. I mean, is, and I understand what you mean. They seem quite whimsical and emotional, his application of those terrorists, but that also does make it an effective political bargaining tool and he’s able to enforce his will correctly or incorrectly on different countries, and that can create peace.

12:41 Of course, he argues that it has, in say, example, the Pakistan-India, and it makes people think twice before they deal with him, and that probably empowers a lot of soft power to America. Do you agree with that?

12:55 Okay. And so I do agree with that, but like every decision, it comes with cost.

13:00 Yeah. And so if you said to me, could the president inflict that sort of carrot-stick mentality with allies and adversaries to get what the United States needs or wants? Yes. But could it also have a potential delletterious impact on the US economy? I would just say, let’s measure that practically.

13:21 Let’s hit the intersection of using that successfully for diplomatic reasons without overly impairing the US economy. And by the way, while we’re talking about this, the Supreme Court is in decision-making mode on whether or not these tariffs are legal, if they’re inside of the ambit of the president’s authority. Now, he did lose that case in the district court. He lost that case in the appellet court. He’s got the Supreme Court on his side in terms of there being six conservatives and only three liberals.

13:55 But it’ll be an interesting case because we broke from your residence, Brian. We broke from the Great Britain. I don’t think it was called the United Kingdom at the time, but we broke from England as a result of no taxation without representation. And so what’s before the court right now, the president is taxing people. He can say otherwise, but what a tariff is, it’s a consumption-based tax levied at the port.

14:22 It’s either the American importer, the American company, or the American consumer is paying the tax at the port. And that’s what it is. It’s not, no country’s paying it. Let’s get out of the disinformation business. And so, what’s that issue?

14:37 Is he allowed to do that without congressional support? So, I’m going to make a prediction on your show. I think the Supreme Court is going to split the baby on that. I think this Supreme Court is going to say the president thought he had the authority, and we’re going to submit to you that he has that authority up until this date, but he now has to go back to the Congress. I don’t think the court is going to say, “Hey, you taxed Brian and Anthony, give him the money back.”

15:04 I don’t think they’re going to say that. I think they’re going to say, “Okay, listen. He has authority. He’s at the end of the goal line of his authority. And so if he wants to continue these tariffs, he’s got to go back to the Congress and get their approval.

15:19 Be a loss. Basically, it would lose them a lot of power if that happened.

15:24 It would lose him a lot of power on a going-forward basis, but I don’t think they’re going to embarrass him by causing a trillion dollar rebate of these taxes. But I could be wrong on that. But I just, you know, having gone to law school, taken constitutional law and read the briefs. I’ve read both briefs now, the solicitor general, that is, opposing the case on behalf of the president, representing the president, and I read the brief from the guys that are accusing them of overstepping their powers.

15:57 They have the more compelling brief, so we’ll have to see what happens. Again, you know, you’re making a very good point. He’s using this as a device. He’s using it as a cudel and he’s using it as a carrot. And you know, he’s going to make the case that he’s been effective with this.

16:16 And I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, but what I would like to see happen is less economic harm to US citizens and more advantage. That’s all. And we’ll see. You know, and look, I’m not. Here’s the one thing I did learn.

16:32 I got an 11-day PhD in my fiasco in Washington. But I’ll share this with your viewers and listeners. It is a way harder job than it looks like in the show The West Wing where anytime they portray the American president. This is an unscripted job, Brian. You know, you’re working on one thing and then you get an avalanche of crisis that comes in on the other side.

16:54 And so, so my heart goes out to the people that are trying to make these decisions. Um, I’ve been made wiser, more psychologically minded by some of the things that have happened to me in my life. And I know that these decisions, there’s things lurking under the surface, Brian, that you and I don’t know about, the BBC and CNN doesn’t know about that are influencing the decision making. So, so, look, I want these people to do well. You know, part of me is just so happy to see something getting done in DC.

17:26 And so I know you go back to the founding fathers and the checks and balances and the three systems of government, but I also see, you know, an executive that is often times paralyzed with the legislative branch and, you know, okay, got they got the big beautiful bill passed, but are they going to get anything else passed? We’ll get to the Clarity Act, which is taking too long. But part of me just loves to see some action for gosh’s sake. And obviously Trump is taking that.

17:51 Of course, the Supreme Court will decide that, but I don’t know. You know, part of me just says, “Wow, at least we’re doing something.” And it doesn’t feel like we’ve been able to do anything for some time. So, I don’t know. It’s

18:05 I mean, let me say this, okay? Because again, I want to be balanced, okay? What he did with the Israelis and what he did in Gaza and how he went after Hamas, but also how he also went after the Israelis.

18:21 Yeah.

18:22 He got them to an agreement and he got the 20 living people back to Israel. Okay. Now, I give him an enormous amount of credit for that. And there are very few personalities on the world stage, Brian, that could have done that. Okay, so he deserves the credit.

18:42 You know, I’m not a, you people say, “Oh, you got Trump derangements and you hate everything about Trump, blah, blah, blah.” And that’s not me. I will give him credit where I think credit is due, but I think it’s also important to explain things that he’s doing that I think, you know, we should think more carefully about. I, you know, the incremental employee is not being hired, Brian. The incremental capital being allocated to a factory or to more equipment or more aircraft or is not happening right now.

19:14 And the reason that is, is that the there’s an uncertainty about the tariffs. There’s an uncertainty about what’s going to happen. And if you’re a corporate CEO or a corporate CFO, you’re like, “Okay, let’s wait to hire the next employee. Let’s wait for the next growth phase of our business because as you and I both know a big part of your capital allocation is going towards paying taxes and so it’s slowed things down, you can see it in the employment data the other thing it’s done, and this is not me saying it, just look at the empirical data.

19:50 Inflation is up the food prices are up. The president can say that the food prices are down but they’re not down. You just look at the, you know, look, you go here on Long Island, you buy a pot roast. It was $9 to buy the pot roast in 2023. If I go to the King Kullen here, local supermarket, it’s $37 to buy the very same pot roast.

20:14 And so, you know, that’s happening. And now, what, how did that happen? Well, he put restrictions on Australian beef importation. He put restrictions on he had restrictions on Brazilian beef importation. He likes the president of Argentina.

20:31 He gave him a $40 billion dollar swap peso swap deal to protect the government’s budget there. And he’s letting that beef finally come in. But I mean, if you were watching C-SPAN 3 weeks ago, the senators would have never done this to Donald Trump, but they were carving up JD Vance about the beef prices here in the United States. And so, again, you know, we you are, are you saying, and again, I’ll speak very self-interestedly for a moment. I’m in the crypto business.

21:04 Is Donald Trump by and large, I’m not in love with his memecoin, but is he better for crypto than Kamala Harris or the Democrats? Resounding yes.

21:14 Yeah.

21:14 By a factor of 10, probably.

21:15 Yeah. By. Yeah. Not. Not even.

21:17 They would have tried to put us all out of business, which would have been ridiculous because this is technology that we’re going to be adopting. You know, crypto is having a bout right now. You know, I think Bitcoin’s down about 30%. Which is typical of what happens with Bitcoin. But it’s still one of the best performing assets in the history of the world.

21:38 And so, the technology is there. I had a wire money. I’m not going to name the club, but I’m joining one of your fancy pants clubs

21:47 Here in the UK.

21:48 Oh my gosh. Okay.

21:49 And I had a wire money, Brian Rose. And guess what? Guess what? It takes three days.

21:54 I’ve got to transfer the money from dollars into British pounds and then it’s got a season and then it gets wired and 5 days later they’ll let me know if the transaction went through. But if I was on the blockchain, zip zip zop and you’ve got the money wired. And so we have better technology than what we’re currently using. And this guy, Paul Atkins, who you may know, he’d be a great guest for you, by the way, if you can get him. But he’s the acting SEC chair.

22:22 He’s a personal friend of mine. The president put him in place in January. He’s done a brilliant job of revamping and making the SEC fairer and more open to innovation. Gary Gensler, if I can be graphic on your show, sucked

22:41 As the SEC commissioner, perhaps the worst SEC commissioner in the history of the United States. And he was politically capricious. He was politically arbitrary and he was an ideologue. And frankly, Brian, he lost a lot of lawsuits. That’s one of the great geniuses of this system.

23:01 If an idiot is in charge of the administration of the law like Gary Gensler, you can sue that administrator in a court here in the US and we, you know, the industry won a lot of court cases against Gensler, but it was just additional cost, additional acrimony and additional hassle. Yeah, exactly. So we’re in good shape. Listen, again, he’s got three years left to go in his presidency. I’d like to see him do well.

23:29 Okay. Okay. And look, on that note, as far as where the Democrats were with crypto and trying to shut down that down, I just want to say something else. They were also really pushing the censoring of big tech. And so, we were deplatformed for 25 months off YouTube and we just got back on a month ago.

23:48 And let’s be honest, without a Trump victory, there’s no way that would have happened. And so, for me, it’s not just like, oh, I think this candidate would be better. I mean, for me it was everything I ever created, what I believe was my fundamental human right, and none of that would have happened without that new president and also his lawsuit against YouTube and pushing those people. So I don’t know, there’s a there was a lot

24:12 But you know you are you are saying something else that has me worried. Okay. So, first of all, I’m sorry that that happened to you, and I’m glad it’s been restored, and I’m glad that Elon Musk has tried to create a broader ideological platform at X, but it does beg the question, do these tech companies have too much power. Okay. Because the irony, Brian, you’re, you’re old enough, I’m old enough to remember the breakup of AT&T.

24:38 Yeah. Remember, we had this monolithic phone company. Yeah.

24:41 Judge Harold Green broke them up in 1984. And the irony is they were sitting on tremendous amounts of technology and they had tremendous amounts of power. When they got broken up, that technology came out of Bell Laboratory. And the great irony is these Mag Seven tech companies were created directly from that technology. So in other words, if we didn’t break up AT&T, those companies wouldn’t live.

25:07 But now they’re trying to sit on technology and they’re trying to suppress potential competitors. And you know, YouTube is as close to a media monopoly.

25:19 Oh yeah.

25:19 As you could have and they’ll suggest otherwise.

25:22 But if you’re going to be on the internet and you’re going to be broadcasting on the internet, if you’re not on YouTube, forget about it. And so it just begs the question, do these companies have too much power?

25:32 Yeah. I mean, like Michael Saylor constantly says, these are all monopolies and it’s impossible to compete with them. They are clearly monopolies, but also, you know, it was Washington DC telling them to censor me and everybody else as well. So,

25:45 Well, well, well, well, well. Okay, let’s state the obvious for your listeners and viewers. There is a connection between Washington and the monopoly. And if the monopoly wants to keep its monopoly, they’re going to listen to the people in Washington. Right.

25:58 Yes. Yes.

25:58 So, if the Democrats are saying, “Censor Brian Rose,” you’re going to censor him. If Trump says, “What the hell are you doing? Bring Brian Rose back.” They’re going to bring him back. But here’s the thing I would say to you.

26:09 I don’t like that. I want Brian Rose to be in a postpartisan era. I want Brian Rose or Anthony Scaramucci or Elon Musk to be in a postregulatory era where your voice can and should be heard. And even if I disagree with your voice, and by the way, there are lefties out there that I wholly disagree with. I don’t want them silenced, Brian.

26:32 I want to be able to debate them in the international free marketplace of ideas. I think our ideas are better. Let’s debate them.

26:40 Yeah. No, it’s a great point. And they have way too much power. And look, I’m the first one to admit that when I wasn’t on YouTube, I might as well have been in a hole in the ground somewhere, you know? And that’s what they used to do back in Argentina.

26:54 And that’s what the mob used to do out in Vegas. And I might as well be there because I was erased.

26:58 And so yeah, it’s a great point you make, Scaramucci, and it’s something has to be addressed. Thank you. It’s been

27:04 It’s been wild. It was 25 months, and when it came back about 5 weeks ago, it was like a time capsule. I was like there’s a picture of me and my son in a social post and he was two years younger, and all my videos and movies were just popping back. It was crazy. So it’s nice to be back.

27:21 It’s nice to be streaming live on these platforms with you. What I love about you is that you get an obituary written about you every couple of years. This is why I have a lot of identification with you. I’ve had like a financial obituary written about me four or five times, you know.

27:35 You know, and now that Bitcoin’s down, I’ve got those haters coming out and they’re going to write how bad and stupid I am again. And but you know, the truth of the matter is persistence matters. You have a lot of young people that listen to your podcast. And so this is a message for the young people. Stay in the game.

27:53 Yeah.

27:53 Think like a Brian Rose or Anthony Scaramucci. Stay in the game. You know, don’t let people detract you from mission. That’s basically the big message.

28:03 Yeah. Well put. And again, you’re super inspiring, Anthony. You’ve come back for some from some serious lows and you bounce right back. And I guess it’s the attitude that you have just to keep going.

28:12 You know, we got taken off YouTube. I was just like, let’s just pretend we’re still up there is what I kind of told my team. And we just, we kept broadcasting twice a week. Our viewership probably went down by 95%. But I just pretended like everybody was watching and we just kept going, and it actually worked out.

28:28 So there you go. Couple more questions about Trump and then we’ll move on because this is about Scaramucci. You know, when you were here a couple years ago or maybe a year ago, you pulled me aside on the way out and you said, “Brian, I don’t know if Trump can actually form a team or keep a team together.” And you know, your comments made a lot of sense to me because in the past, not just you but people were staying with him for 30 days and 40 days and 50 days.

28:55 In the last 300 days, you know, obviously we’ve seen a Trump that I don’t think anyone expected. So from the speed of light movement to this crazy cabinet with Rubio and Bessent and Lutnick and all these like And I’m just curious if you just see the maturation and evolution and maybe just the getting older as a man factor with him and maybe see a different guy than you knew, or are you like Brian? He’s still the same guy. He just looks a little different.

30:29 I’m curious, cuz you actually know him well. People don’t know about Mooch that you campaigned for him. You spent your own money for him back in ’16.

30:38 I know the kid. Look, I’m still talking to the kids. I know him well. I still talk to the kids. I had a falling out with him.

30:44 You know, people don’t remember this, but he went after my wife on Twitter. I mean, who the hell does that? Okay. So,

30:49 So for me, that’s a, I’m Italian from Long Island, Brian. You know the type of person I am. You’re going to go after my wife on Twitter. We’re going to fight it to the death. You have a Harvard degree and you’re a lawyer.

30:59 So, let’s just keep that in mind.

31:01 Exactly. I’m a Harvard degree and a lawyer, but I grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood. So, there’s a lot of Matt Damon-esque Good Will Hunting s*** going on in my personality. Okay. So what I’m, what I’m saying to you is he’s doing something now that I admire.

31:19 Okay. He was probably nervous in the beginning of his presidency. And I’m taking you back to 2017. I witnessed it. And by the way, who wouldn’t be?

31:27 You’re now the president of the United States. And so he was a little intimidated by the job. He probably had too many people in the team that were too establishment-oriented for him.

31:37 Yeah.

31:37 And so he switched up his team for Trump, too. Having said that, I think he’s also slower to fire people. Karoline Leavitt said recently that the president doesn’t want to fire people on the whims of newspaper reports or mistakes that could be made. You know, Heg said as an example, that signal WhatsApp kurfuffle.

32:02 Yeah.

32:02 Would have fired him for sure in the first term. And I think the president’s looking at it like I don’t want to give scalps to the liberals and let’s keep the team together. And I think that that’s admirable. I give him again. I’m going to give him credit for that.

32:17 Do I like some of the things that HGESC is doing? I don’t, I don’t, I don’t think we should be calling the Department of War. I don’t think we should be. I don’t, I don’t, it makes us look bad. It’s like a insecurity.

32:30 We should be looking at ourselves as the strongest military, the strongest defense capability in the world. The United States has historically not started wars. We did start one damning war, the Iraqi war, which I regret. And I think most people now have decided that was a horrific decision. But when I was growing up in the country, you were growing up in the country, we were told by our social studies teachers, we don’t start the wars.

32:56 We’re there to defend democracy. We’re there to defend freedom. So I like the words department of defense more than department of war. I don’t think we need to call ourselves that. And so we’re going to disagree.

33:08 And I could take you down the list of things culturally that I think matter. You know, words matter in the society, Brian. You know that.

33:17 Yes.

33:17 I know that. Okay. And you know, words matter for the culture at London Real. They matter for the culture at SkyBridge. They matter for the culture of how the government’s going to be run.

33:27 True. Maybe he’s just projecting power and then getting peace on the back of it. But I make you your point is made and I appreciate it. What do you make of these Epstein files and the fact that now I guess they’re coming public with some caveats and the witch hunt aspect of it and all that. I’m just curious.

33:49 Listen, it’s a horrific thing. Okay. When you go through the victims’ testimonies and when you go through the actual cases and the Ghislaine Maxwell conviction and you go through the earlier conviction in, you know, 2008 of Jeff Epstein and then the subsequent accusations and the imprisonment of Jeff Epstein. This is an absolutely horrific thing. Is it Donald Trump himself implicated?

34:20 I think it’s very fair to say, and it’s inside of the facts of the story that he had a relationship with Jeff Epstein. Many of these billionaire socialites in the ’80s and ’90s did. So you have to acknowledge that it did Trump trip over the line into nefarious behavior. I think there’s absolutely no smoking gun on that. And so to accuse him of that, I think, is a bridge too far.

34:47 But unless you’re telling me there is that information that’s going to come out, and I predict that there won’t be. That I don’t, I don’t see this harming the president, I think. I said this on my own podcast. I think the president has been off his game on the Epstein thing. And just hear me out for a second because he was on his back foot trying to contain the information.

35:09 Now, maybe that was to protect some of his donors. Maybe that was to protect some of the people that he’s close to. I don’t know. But it wasn’t protecting him. You know, his best move was the move that he pulled on Sunday.

35:21 And I said this 10 days prior. I said if the president, knowing him the way I know him, if he was on his game, he would tell the Congress, “Release the goddamn Epstein files.” Because then he could go to his people and say, “I’m not in the file. I just said to release it.” You see what I mean?

35:38 So, so I think him holding it back makes people think, well, if he’s holding it back, he must be hiding something. So, we’ll have to see how it unfolds. But you ask me a straight-up question, I’ll give you a straight-up answer. I do not think that this is going to be super harmful to the president. I do think, however, though, and people should be aware of this, that he’s going to lame duck in 12 months.

36:05 And so, we can send out Trump 2028 hats. We can send out four more year hats. Steve Bannon can come on your show or other shows and say that he’s going to be the president in 2028. He will not be the president in 2028.

36:17 So Bannon’s wrong.

36:18 Bannon, Bannon’s wrong.

36:20 Okay.

36:20 Bannon is wrong about a lot of things. You know, I think he’s like the f*** worst person I’ve ever met. I would love to have a show where it was Y, me, and Bannon on the show together. Okay, he won’t, of course, do that because he knows I know him and he, so I know all of his moves.

36:36 You know him from back in the day, back in ’17. I know him back in the day and I know his moves and I know his whole white national supremacy nonsense. And by the way, I also know the president’s pissed at him because remember I still talk to a lot of MAGA people and the president doesn’t like the undue attention that Bannon is putting on himself by saying all this nonsense. Now Trump likes troll Trump likes to do three things, Brian. Don’t ever forget this about Trump.

37:01 He wants your attention. That’s numero uno.

37:04 He wants to make a little bit of money for himself. Okay? And he wants to troll and trigger his haters. Those are the three things that Trump likes to do. So, you know, yes, you know, telling people Trump 28 and putting the hat in front of Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer, it’s s*** it’s A+ trolling, okay?

37:24 But he’s not running in 2028. And so, what ends up happening, he’s going to start to lame duck. Ted Cruz today as I am speaking to you here in New York is floating the possibility of running for president in 2028, and they are going to

37:39 He did really he did, and there’s going to be some jockeying now as these people prepare for the 2028 elections and the potential candidates there and that’s why you said you saw kind of the Marjorie Taylor Greene effect, and everyone’s trying to figure out what their voice is going to be in a post-Trump 100% they’re breaking from Trump. They’re going to break. But by the way, by the way, that is exactly what’s happened in the modern era going back to Herbert Hoover.

38:10 Right?

38:10 You know, you get into the lame duck position, and then people say, “Well, this is how I’m differentiating myself. I want to be president.” Brian, you know, a lot of politicians, there are people waking up in Washington right now, looking in the mirror, getting themselves dressed, and they see the 48th president. Okay, they do. It could be a dog.

38:28 It could be an elected dog catcher or it could be a senior senator, but they look in the mirror and say, “I’m gonna be the 48th president.”

38:35 So, Trump’s not even though Vance probably has over 50% chance if you weren’t the Polymarket right now.

38:41 I think Vance has a 50% chance, but I’m going to stipulate to you that Vance will not be the guy because he’s too close to Trump. And what Trump has a tendency to do, he’s a Shakespearean figure. He has a tendency to eat his young. If you go through st

38:57 That was the old Trump Mooch.

38:58 Okay. Well, let’s see. Let’s see. I got Vance like in the movie Fargo where his ass is going into the wood chipper and he’s gonna get chopped up by Trump. And by the way, if you don’t believe me, if you don’t believe me, call Mike Pence.

39:09 Ask Mike Pence how his political career is going, having been Trump’s first vice president. Now,

39:14 Well, he he brought up himself.

39:18 All right. Well, you’re saying that Trump is going to treat Vance differently and I’m telling you Trump is Shakespearean. He doesn’t like younger people replacing him. You know, if you told me that Don Trump Jr. was replacing him, he would be okay with that. Eric Trump, he would be okay with.

39:33 I don’t think he’s okay with Vance. And I think he’s going to. And by the way, Trump is a type of personality, and you may not like this, but Trump is the type of personality where almost if the Democrats win, there’ll be some smug satisfaction. Here’s the narrative. You Republicans were nothing without me.

39:50 I jumped in and I galvanized you. Won two presidencies. Uh, and now that I’m gone, you’re nothing without me again, you know. And so he’s a lot like that, my brother.

39:59 Or maybe he’s older and wiser and more practical. Let’s

40:02 That’s your That’s your narrative. I don’t, I’m in the leopard doesn’t change their spots very much narrative, but let’s see what happens. Hopefully, you’ll invite me back. Maybe you’ll be able to call me on my [expletive] if I’m wrong.

40:14 Yeah, let’s go. Vance Rubio, come on. For the big win. Uh, what was I going to ask you? Uh, today in Washington, Trump is meeting with your mayor of New York City, Mamdani.

40:26 My mayor. Yeah, my mayor.

40:27 What do you make of Mamdani in general? I don’t know what you can and can’t say. And then what do you make of the meeting?

40:36 I think the meeting is going to go very well because I do know Trump’s personality. I think Trump likes winners, and Mamdani won the race handily. Okay, let’s just go over that. I was for Andrew Cuomo. I grew up with Andrew, love Andrew and Chris, and I wanted Andrew to win.

40:52 But Mamdani ran a more effective campaign and he beat the combined electoral results, the number of votes between Sliwa and Cuomo. Mamdani got more than both of them. So he clearly won the race. Voter turnout was up and so forth. I think he’s inexperienced, and the jury’s out.

41:12 I don’t like the fact that he’s going to be mayor if you’re asking me. If I was hiring somebody for that very complex job, I wouldn’t hire somebody with Mamdani’s resume. But he made it, and he organized a really good campaign. Um, but here’s the thing I would say to you and anybody listening, he’s a lot like Trump. Remember I said Trump ran on immigration.

41:34 What’s the issue? Immigration. Mamdani, again, like or dislike him, he ran on one issue, Brian, affordability. You’re an anti-semite. Here’s a record of you being anti-Semitic.

41:45 Affordability. You hate cops. Here’s you on record. You’re going to defund the police. Let’s get the conversation back to affordability.

41:52 And so there was a very resonating message. The younger people that live in this city, Brian, they can barely afford their rent and their groceries, and they’re pissed off. And they’re also pissed off generationally, Brian. They think our generation, you and me, sort of the elder people have failed them. And so they’re like, “Hey, you guys suck.

42:15 Let’s try somebody from our generation to see if we can fix this.” So for all those reasons, he’s the mayor and I am a New Yorker. Okay? And I’m going to stipulate to you right now, I’m not a Floridian. I live in New York.

42:30 I pay my taxes in New York. And I told Spike Lee after the election, I will shut the lights off in the city alongside of you. Meaning, you know, we’re not leaving. He’s not leaving. I’m not leaving.

42:42 And so I want the guy to do well. But if he’s going to go hard democratic socialist, listen to Donald Trump because Donald Trump has very good political instincts. Trump said if this guy wins, goes hard democratic socialist, he’ll be the poster boy for failed policies. He’ll be the poster boy for insanity on the left, and it’ll give the Republicans an opportunity to control the card table for many years. And I’ll just say one last thing about New York because I know this place well.

43:13 He will get fired in four years. This is not San Francisco. It’s not Chicago. It’s not Detroit. This is New York.

43:21 Okay, you better perform. You better that the people are upset about the cleanliness of the city, the homelessness, and the crime. You better perform. If you don’t perform, you’re going to get your ass kicked and fired. And again, he’s not a dummy because Jessica Tisch, who’s our police commissioner, who I think has got an 80% approval rating, by the way, she’s done a great job of supporting our police officers, men and women, and she’s done a great job of containing crime.

43:49 He’s decided to leave her in place, which is his first good personnel decision in my mind. So let’s, we have to give him the benefit of the doubt. Like, like, like I said to you earlier, I wasn’t with Trump this election. He won the election. I want him to do well as president.

44:05 Investment club. Today I consider it the best investment that I’ve ever made. We get four projects presented a week by their associated CEOs. Personally, I’m completely blown away by the quality of these projects, and I know of nowhere else where I would be given the same opportunity. Each week that passes, I feel more appreciative, fact that I’m a member of this group.

44:24 The vibe was just tremendous. Everybody’s on the same wavelength. We just clicked. Everybody listened to each other, enjoyed their company. It was just magical.

44:34 Magical. Take action. Don’t take my word for it. Do diligence you need to do. And I really hope that someday down the road I see you in the club.

44:41 It far exceeded expectations without question. I was not with Mamdani. Shows you my political acumen sucks, Brian. But that’s fine. I wasn’t with Mamdani, but I do want him to do well because he’s my mayor now and I’m a New Yorker.

45:04 How does it feel when you walk in Midtown Manhattan? Uh, how does it feel there now? Do you feel like there’s friends that are missing that have done the Florida defection? Does it feel less safe? Are there stores that are empty?

45:18 I’m just curious because I haven’t lived there in 20 years. Okay, so let me set the scene for you. It’s not as bad as be reporting. You know, the media has a tendency to exaggerate stuff.

45:27 Same with London.

45:27 Same with London, right? They go, “Oh, everyone’s getting stabbed with a knife in London and everything’s horrific, and then you and I are walking on the street. What are they talking about?” Right?

45:34 You haven’t been stabbed lately in London, right? No,

45:36 But you probably don’t wear your finest watch in London. Maybe you do.

45:41 No, I don’t. I don’t wear my finest watch in London. I wear my finest watch in New York. Unfortunately, I can’t speak for London, but I can speak for New York. The bail reform, which incidentally was signed into law by Andrew Cuomo, has crippled the city.

45:56 Okay? And if I were the police commissioner, and let me channel my Jessica Tisch for a second, I would tell people, we know the criminals. We have six or 7,000 professional criminals. Remember, like London, we have cameras everywhere. We know the people that are looting the stores.

46:11 We know the people that are pickpocketing people. And

46:13 You have cameras now everywhere.

46:14 Most, most places. Yeah. Not as it’s not as proliferate as it is in London, but in most places it’s pretty good now.

46:23 And whether you talk to Bill Bratton, the former police commissioner, or Commissioner Tisch, our current one, they’ll tell you, “We know where the criminals are. Give us permission to lock them up or give us permission to knock them to the ground, and your quality of life will go up and your crime will go down.” Okay, so we do know this. And the question is, are we going to do that or not? And I would argue this isn’t racism.

46:46 You know, this is not racism. Stop the crime, higher quality of life in the city, whether it’s London or New York. So, I will say to you, walking on the street in New York, it is safer and better than it was 5 years ago. And again, we’re going back to the COVID era and the pre-COVID era. And I would say that the crane operation, because I do look at this, Brian, if you look at New York, you got six times the level of cranes going in New York than you do in any other city in the United States, including Miami.

47:17 Okay. But you mentioned Florida. So, let’s go over those statistics. I think these are relevant. And if I were an adviser to Mamdani, I would say be careful because you’ve had 600,000 people leave the city in the last three years.

47:32 And those 600,000 people, guess what? The rich are the most mobile, Brian. Yeah. And they are leaving. A lot of those people went to Dallas.

47:40 Some of those people went to Tennessee. Most of those people went to Florida.

47:45 And taxes, safety, taxes, safety, cleanliness, politics, policy, You know, all of those different reasons. And frustration with New York, frustration with the goods. And remember, taxes are a price for goods and services from your government. And if you’re going to tax me and not deliver the goods and services, there’s a disconnect. And at some point, people will leave until you get the arbitrage tightened between what you’re charging and what you’re delivering.

48:17 And so 600 people leaving is a big blow. I’ll give you the stats worth considering. The top 1% of the New York City residents in terms of their income pay 48% of the taxes, Brian. And so you got to be very careful. Mayor, mayor-elect, please be careful if you’re going to have free groceries, free bus rides.

48:41 You’re going to exorbitantly tax these people. And then you’re going to allow people to pray on them, pray on them in their homes and break into their stores and have no recompense and no deterrence, they’re going to leave. They’re going to pick up and leave and they’re going to build their businesses and their families elsewhere. And so I don’t want that to happen. And so hopefully he gets it.

49:05 You know, there is a, I’d say it’s a low probability. I don’t know what it’s it is in the Polymarket, but there is a probability. This is a cunning young kid. He could have campaigned hard left. If he goes to a moderate position, he may end up being the mayor for two terms.

49:22 Yeah.

49:22 He won’t be the mayor for two terms. If he says, “I’m a communist and I want to disavow private property and I want to see if I can push JP Morgan out of the city because I hate bankers.” He’s not going to make it.

49:35 Yeah. No, I agree. He looks like he wants to survive and that could be great for everybody. Right. Right.

49:40 And it’s interesting when you’re describing this microcosm of New York City. I’m having flashbacks to what’s happening in the UK. You know, you got this Labor government that is now trying to raise the taxes on the wealthy and when they go to count up the receipts, they realize that there’s no more money because all the wealthy left. Except now for us, it’s happening countrywide, but maybe mostly London city, statewide.

50:02 Are they, are they going to reverse that, or they’re sticking with that? Cuz that was a politically motivated. That was an envy move. that was we’re envious of these people so let’s throw them out of the country and self-harm ourselves for some reason the UK wants, believes in self-harm, so I don’t know why they’re doing that, but go ahead.

50:19 Yeah, there’s a lot of psychology there. We can go into it for a whole episode. Look, I know they got push back from the city for that, but I don’t see that reversing anytime soon, and again, the Labor party is here for four more years whether it’s the same prime minister or not. They look, they were going to do a couple other things tax-wise that they have backed off on, but the whole, you know, all the foreign nationals that were here have pretty much bolted from Milan, Dubai, and other places.

50:45 So we’ll just see how further they ride this. Like I said, they seem to be getting some feedback and I think they’re not raising the upper tax rate in this budget and a few other things, but let’s see. But it’s still going the wrong way. And look, you know, I spent a lot of time in Dubai. I know you’ve been going to Abu Dhabi for much longer than I’ve been going there, but when you, you know, when you have, when you’re in a place like Dubai that is kind of on the come up and you come back and you look at Europe, which is on the down slow, on the downs slope, and I don’t see it reversed anytime soon, it is, it’s kind of depressing and I think the city and the country feel it.

51:22 I don’t know if you feel it when you come here, but it’s something that it’s definitely real. It’s hard for me to assess. You know, I love London. It’s my You know, I remember I think I told you this. I went to school in London as a young kid.

51:38 Yeah.

51:39 I was at the London School of Economics in the mid 80s.

51:42 It’s harder for me to assess than you. I guess the only an American observing London and observing the Brits, I see something maybe sometimes these guys don’t see. There’s some cynicism that creeps into British culture. I would step back and look at all these achievements, the patents, the common law development, the I mean, I read some wild statistic. I’m not going to quote it, right?

52:10 So, I’d have to go ChatGPT, but somebody could do this. All the different patents that the British people

52:16 I mean, you guys have Isaac Newton. I mean, come on, man. And I mean, you know, I mean,

52:19 You know, I would like to see less cynicism, and more, you know, aspirational self-confidence. That’s all. That’s what I would say.

52:30 Yeah. That’s just not the culture. But, you know, Trump was here out at Windsor Castle and he gave a toast and he actually was walking through all of that great stuff you mentioned, not to mention all the contributions to the arts and writing. And even I was taken aback. I was like, “Oh, wow.”

52:46 But you know what have you done for me lately? And I don’t know if it’s on the trajectory. Let’s see. It still has great AI talent. It has great you know universities.

52:57 It still has tons of potential. So let’s kind of see where it goes. I want to ask you about The Rest Is Politics US because it’s amazing to see the traction you’re getting when I go on YouTube. I mean there’s the Scaramucci channel and there’s that and I mean you know you’re everywhere. First of all, I guess before I ask you about that,

53:15 You think I would do better if I had a beautiful suit on and the white collar and the gorgeous tie and pocket square. I probably would do better.

53:23 I mean, apparently not. Look at our numbers. You know, you’re blowing me away, Mooch. So, I might want one of those t-shirts.

53:28 I don’t know. I don’t know about that.

53:30 I’m, when I was prepping for you today and I said to one of my guys, I said, “When does this guy have time to run SkyBridge?” And then I said to myself, well, maybe this is the top of the funnel because if I know Mooch, then I want to do business with Mooch. So maybe the smartest thing for you is to be out there. I know you do your conferences, your SALT conferences are crushing. I was a little jealous out in Wyoming.

53:51 I was wondering where my invite was, but we’ll sort that out.

53:53 Come in. No, let me tell you something. If you weren’t on the invite, I apologize. You should be on all my invites. I’d love to have you at all these things, you know.

53:59 No, it’s amazing. But is it, is that something you intentionally do? I mean, look, the last time we were hanging out, you had just done the SAS: Who Dares Wins and you were on some like scaffolding and you were like, “Brian, I’m too old for this.” But I was like, “Why are you even doing that?”

54:13 It definitely was too old for Did you. Did it click with you many years ago that media is an important part of your business and also maybe what you also enjoy.

54:27 Yeah. I mean, listen, I mean, so you’re cheaper than my therapist, so let’s go into it. If you said to me when I was 22, what did I want to do with my life? I wanted to drive to Hollywood, get a head shot, and be in the entertainment business.

54:41 Really?

54:41 Yeah. I’ll be honest with you about that. I didn’t have the guts for that, Brian. I had parents that were working-class people. I knew correctly.

54:50 I assessed correctly at a young age that my parents were going to run out of money and they didn’t have one of their kids subsidizing them. They’d run out of money. I’ll just give you an example. My father unfortunately passed. Well, you know, I shouldn’t say unfortunately because he lived a great life, but he was 88 when he died in September of 2023.

55:09 Okay.

55:09 But my parents bought their house for $16,000 in 1962. It’s $22,000 of property taxes. And without my subsidy, my mother could never live there. And it would have been an indigent situation for everybody. So, I looked at my life and said, “Okay, I would love to be in entertainment,” but I can’t be because I don’t have the guts for it and it’s too hit or miss in terms of your success.

55:35 So, I’m going to go to Wall Street.” Why am I going to Wall Street? It’s what Willie Sutton said about the banks, Brian. Why are you robbing banks, Willie? Well, that’s where the money is.

55:43 Okay. So, I went to Wall Street. And I figured, you know, if I was just halfway decent in Wall Street, I would make some money. But you’re now fast forwarding. Have I’ve been offered some of these reality shows that I think are fun.

55:55 Particularly the special forces one I wanted to try. They kicked the living s*** out of me. They scared the s*** out of me, but it was a lot of fun to do it. But the podcasting and the more public persona, I’m about to turn 62 in January. And my attitude is I’ve done a lot on Wall Street, accomplished a lot.

56:14 I’ve got two guys that help me run the business. They’re Harvard Law School classmates of mine. They do a great job running the business. They own equity in the business and they tease me. They say, “Now that you’re doing all this podcasting, our performance numbers are up.”

56:28 I mean, it’s not a nice thing to say to me, but it’s fine. But the point I’m making is you have correctly assessed that my public profile has helped our business. It’s helped us get guests at our conferences. It’s helped me be a good intermediary, if you will. And it’s also a good convenor, but it’s also helped us in terms of client acquisition.

56:51 So I’m in a different stage in my life where I’ve got other people running the business. I’ve got younger people in their late 30s, mid-40s that we give a lot of authority to, delegate a lot of responsibility to and I think it’s worked for us. It’s a workable solution. Now, we’ve also made a big strategic bet for the company and we can talk about that and I’ve been on your show talking about the digital transformation and I wrote a book last year. I think I

57:23 You know about my book, you know, a little book of Bitcoin. Michael Saylor on that, who you know well, wrote the introduction for me. He’s an awesome guy.

57:30 Yeah.

57:30 And you know, Bitcoin’s having a little bit of a tumble right now, but it’s a, it’s a garden variety tumble for Bitcoin to be down 25 to 30%. And that’s made a big difference for us. This pivot, I’m talking about something scary. And this is a axiomatic fact for human beings. You know what’s scary, Brian?

57:50 Change. finance company. I’m going to flip the table over and I’m going to target my company into something digital and I’m going to pretend that I’m a 30-year-old as opposed to a 60-year-old and I’m just going to flip this table, flip it over, and bring the business into this other direction. That was scary. Okay.

59:11 And I looked really smart in the beginning when Bitcoin went up and then I looked really stupid when Bitcoin went down. Now it’s up again. Now it’s down again. Whatever. I think your trajectory is right.

59:22 And so I would tell people you’ve got to embra, and by the way, I’m not saying this like I’m some guru, and I can, you know, I’m telling you I was scared to make those changes. I was scared. And so my message to people is embrace the fear, you know, embrace the change, embrace the suck, if you will, because certain things do suck. But you’ve got to get through them, you know. And by the way, Brian, you know this, which is why I’m a big admirer of yours.

59:51 You’ve taken exogenous risk in your life. And some of it’s worked out for you. It’s made you very successful. And some of it you stubbed a toe or flipped over and broke a leg or a nose. And what do you do in life?

1:00:05 You got to dust yourself off and get up. You know, I never played the victim after getting fired from the White House. And hey, they fired me. I own it. Made a mistake.

1:00:13 I never played the victim when our, you know, reporters get in my face, Bitcoin’s down 40%, you suck. Yes, Bitcoin is down 40% and I look like I suck right now. Could you come back and see me in two years? You know, I’m not going to. I think it’s a very big message for your young people.

1:00:30 Don’t be the scarecrow and the Wizard of Oz blaming others and pointing the fingers in different directions. Don’t play the victim. Be accountable. Own your stuff, and embrace when things are going wrong because if you can do that you can adapt, you can change, and you can have the strength and courage to be an innovator and to be an entrepreneur. Those are the messages, and I put those messages out regularly on Instagram or regularly on Twitter or wherever I’m allowed to.

1:01:01 YouTube, you know, I haven’t been shadowbanned on YouTube yet. And I’ve got a couple hundred thousand subscribers there and I tell people what I think, you know, and listen to me. Another thing I really like about you, you’re intellectually curious and you like sharing in other people’s successes. That’s another big lesson for people, you know, drop the envy. Be the first call for your friends.

1:01:25 I want to be if you hit a home run or you get elected mayor or whatever your aspirations are, I want to be one of the guys you pick up the phone and call so you know I’ll send you a bottle of champagne and celebrate it with you. Be that person, you know, don’t be the griper.

1:01:40 Yeah, it’s great advice, Mooch. Great advice. And yeah, look, I think I learned 10 years ago on this show, I think somebody that came through who basically taught me to start engineering risk into my life. And so now when I look ahead at 12 months, I’m like, I got to do something that scares the living daylights out of me. And now I’m so used to it that I find out that it’s true if you do that, you win more.

1:02:04 Of course, you’re going to take some hits, but you’re going to net net win a lot more, but also I just enjoy my life a lot more when I’m playing it like that. So, yeah, that’s what we’ve been able to do,

1:02:17 You know, but you know, yes to every agree everything, but you’re also going to attract the right type of people to hang out with. Brian, remember, I tell my kids, you’re the weighted average of the five people you’re closest to.

1:02:29 When you act like Brian Rose, you’re going to attract like-minded people. It’s going to make your life happier.

1:02:34 Yeah. Well said. Well said. And we got to talk about crypto. You know, we’ve had this interesting pullback that no one ever sees coming.

1:02:44 But of course, no one ever sees the pullback coming. Just when you think it’s going to end this year. God, I’m having terrible flashbacks to 21 because I still remember 21. I still remember the 69K all-time high. It was going to 100 grand by Christmas.

1:02:57 Everybody was 100% certain. Lambo’s for everybody. And of course, when everyone’s 100% certain, we know what the markets do, the opposite. And now that I look at the last few weeks, it feels like the exact same setup. What do you tell people that don’t understand why?

1:03:12 Of course, the why isn’t very important in Bitcoin, is it? But what do you tell people when they look at this and they panic? We’re down to 85 82K this morning.

1:03:22 Well, I mean, again, you know, I tell people do your homework and either believe the fundamentals if you have the right thing or not, you know, and that volatility is your friend. This is a brand new asset and volatility is your friend. And so if you look at if you look at this right now, everything you just said is true. The expectation was Bitcoin was going to close the year at 150. It’s sitting at 80-85.

1:03:55 It’s emotion driven, but it’s also technically driven. And so if you’ve got a lot of people loaded for bear and the consensus is it’s going up and they’re levered and then you get hit and this is exogenous hits. And again, not blaming the president, but I’m just going to go back to October 10th. He’s in a fight over the fentanyl. He’s in a fight with the Chinese over the rare earth deals.

1:04:18 Two weeks later, he’s got it resolved after he meets with them in Asia. But he goes out, he puts out a threatening tweet and it dislocates the market and it causes a cascade of margin calls. And so I can point to October 10th as you mentioned ’21, and I’ll go to ’22 in the FTX debacle.

1:04:38 Yeah. It takes, as my friend Tom Lee has said, when you get hit like you did on October 10th, it takes six to eight weeks for the market to adjust and for all the selling to cascade through the market as people are getting margin called and try to settle their situations. And so I look at something as a 37-year veteran on Wall Street. I look at the fear and greed index. And I can tell you when people are greedy, you know, and this index goes from zero to 100, Brian.

1:05:11 So if you’re at a 100, that’s extreme fear, lots of FOMO, lots of euphoria. Market’s going to collapse. Okay. When you’re at seven,

1:05:21 Yeah, literally that’s where we are right now. You’re at seven, you’re pretty much at the bottom. Everyone is extremely fearful. You know this guy, the gold bug, what’s his last name? His first name is Peter.

1:05:35 Peter Schiff.

1:05:36 We had him back on the show back in ’07, by the way.

1:05:39 It’s crazy.

1:05:39 You know, I love this guy because he’s been dead wrong about Bitcoin for 20 years, but he’s got the drum going right now. And so what ends up happening is you go through a bare market, the bears come out, the haters come out praying for the demise of SkyBridge or me or whatever, and they’re beating the drum. But the extreme fear indicates a long-term buying opportunity. So I will stipulate Bitcoin 17 years old. I think it’s continuing to be adapted.

1:06:10 There’s over 250 million wallets in use. I see it as a store of value. It’s imperfect. But if you’re betting against Bitcoin, I think you’re going to lose long term. You want to bet short-term?

1:06:24 Sure. But you know this and I know this. If you’re out of the market for the 10 best days of a stock or for the 10 best days in a year of Bitcoin, you’ve missed most of the return. So, you either have to make a decision that this is a long-term asset of yours or not. But one thing that is happening in Bitcoin that I do like, and that is aggressive OG selling.

1:06:47 Okay? So people that owned tens of thousands of bitcoins that they bought them in 2010 8 2009 are selling and billions of dollars have been triggered over the last couple of months into this year. And I like that because that’s now a why do I like that? Supply

1:07:06 Because it’s a supply. Yes. It’s a recirculation. You want, if you really want a decentralized asset, I would, this would be like an IPO. You know, Jeff Bezos starts Amazon.

1:07:18 He owns a majority of the shares. Now, he’s offering out some of those shares. You know, he’s the OG of Amazon, but he’s liquidating some of his shares to create a greater population of shareholders. And I like that. Now that comes with unfortunately pain because when you are untrapping lots of supply like we’ve had in the last year, it comes with pain.

1:07:41 But I would say to you psychologically because you’ve lived this, I’ve lived this. If I said to you, hey, it’s January of 20 and 23. So it’s really only three short years ago, Brian, Bitcoin was at 16,000.

1:07:58 Okay? And I said to you in January 23, if I came into your office and said, “Brian, let me tell you the good news. Will you think this is good news?” I’ll ask you the question. Brian, I can see the future.

1:08:09 November of 2025, Bitcoin’s going to be 84,000, up from 16. Are you a happy camper?

1:08:16 Yes.

1:08:16 Okay. But Brian, Bitcoin went to 126,000. It’s now down to 84,000. Are you a happy camper? And the answer is, no, you’re not, because of the psychology of it.

1:08:29 Yeah.

1:08:29 So, I’ve just asked people to take a deep breath. Maybe Brian, I’ll be lucky enough Brian will invite me back on the show. It’ll be 2027. Bitcoin will be 15180. And if you stayed in there, you were patient and you won.

1:08:42 And by the way, if I’m wrong, I will admit it. I will admit that I’m wrong. But I don’t see that happening. You know, I see this as a long-term asset. Is Saylor going to be right that it’s worth $13 million?

1:08:57 I’m not in that camp. And Michael and I have fought about this. Yeah.

1:09:00 Intellectually, I see it as a digital store of value and as people younger than the two of us get older, they’ll embrace it. They’ll own it in their portfolio alongside of gold and other store of value assets. And could it get to excuse me, could it get to half of the market capitalization of gold? Could it get to the market capitalization of gold? I believe it could.

1:09:22 And that’s a lot of upside from here for Bitcoin. So, there’d be no reason for me to sell it. I think that story is still very much intact.

1:09:31 Yeah, I think you’re right. You mentioned Tom Lee. I’m a big fan. What do you make of Ethereum? What do you make of Treasury companies and obviously his assertion that, you know, all these stable coins are going to be on ETH rails, therefore we buy ETH.

1:09:50 He’s going to be right, but a lot of people are going to be right. So, if you told me, you know, and again, I’m fully disclosed. I have DAT exposure to a Solana DAT. I have DAT exposure to an Avalanche DAT. Believe it or not, I own a Binance DAT in my portfolio.

1:10:10 Uh and I’m a big fan of BitMine, and I’m a big fan of Tom Lee. And so he’s going to be right, but a lot of people will be right. I think there will be five or six layer ones that survive and do well. I think the DAT thing got a little foamy 3 or 4 months ago and now it’s come back down to earth. But is there a thesis for somebody to run a digital asset treasury?

1:10:36 And in Tom’s case, his team using the yield or the staking yield off of Ethereum to buy accretive assets to use the potential mechanisms of financial engineering between the mixture of stock and, you know, debt and equity in the portfolio of the DAT to create shareholder value for people. I think that that premise is still there. And so I’m a believer. Well, Anthony, BitMine has lost 50% of its value. Well, unfortunately, special, you’re going to get in crypto and crypto from this day forward is going to go straight up.

1:12:21 I’m just being honest with you, it doesn’t happen. It won’t happen. You have to ride the cycle. Now, you and I are probably three or four bare cycles into our crypto investing experience. So, this isn’t hitting us as badly as hitting some other people.

1:12:36 But I think Tom is going to be right. I think the structural problem that we were faced with on October 10th is now abating. I think there’ll be a lot of people that will have exited. But I think that this long-term story is still intact. I’m going to leave you with this thought.

1:12:50 This is a very important historical thought. If you were my age and you know this in March of 2000, the NASDAQ crashed, Brian, we went through an excruciatingly painful crash.

1:13:05 I was there. Company, a company, by exactly a company by the name of Amazon.com went down 90%.

1:13:12 And there, there were people in my genre. I was 36 years old at the time and there were people in my genre that said I am swearing off forever technology stocks and I’m never going to buy them again. Look at what happened to us. And Brian, that was the biggest mistake that you could have made. In the ensuing 25 years, those tech stocks have been the most powerful story and have arguably been the best investment thesis of economic history for the United States.

1:13:45 And so what happens is new things, they come with uncertainty and they come with a volatility wave until they are fully adopted.

1:13:57 And that’s my message, sir. And I just tell people hang tight. You know,

1:14:02 You’re giving me flashbacks. So, I was in New York City in March of 2000. I had accepted a job as the CFO of a company called luxuryfinder.com that had raised $15 million from all the big wigs out in Long Island. It was run by Jimmy Finkelstein, who used to run the New York Law Journal.

1:14:19 I remember Jimmy Finkelstein.

1:14:20 He just bought him out and he needed something to do. And his high society wife Pam, I forgot her name. They got up together and he’s like, “I’m gonna sell a jet on the internet.”

1:14:32 And my buddy was kind of Bruce Wasserstein’s right-hand man before he passed from MIT, and he introduced me to Jimmy. And so there we were building the next.com. I was so annoying to my Wall Street buddies, ’cause I was telling them that it’s all com, it’s Columbus in the New World, and they were rolling their eyes. And then I remember that crash, and you couldn’t say the word tech without getting someone to throw a punch at you. And I felt the same way you did.

1:14:57 It’s like nobody wanted to touch this toxic mess. I thought forever. And then what happened? A few years later, Google was born. Right.

1:15:06 100%.

1:15:06 And then a few years later, and like you said, the greatest wealth creation probably in American history.

1:15:11 100%. 100%.

1:15:12 Yeah, you’re right. And I stayed out of it because we had been burned so bad. But you should have gone in it. That’s for sure. That’s for sure.

1:15:23 One other question about the system, Mooch. I see so many great founders and great teams with great ideas in the blockchain space and yet everything is so depressed out there from a token standpoint that it feels like none of them have a chance. And, look, a lot of the narratives haven’t popped like the gaming narrative and all these others. I’m really close with Yatsu, and you know, we have investments with him and we have some of his equity in the Mocaverse and all that good stuff, and

1:15:54 You know, I see just great ideas, great people, and yet, man, they just don’t seem to have a chance in the last year lately, and I’m wondering, do you think that will turn around? Now, granted, the biggest criticism is crypto is you’re making a bunch of products for your people in crypto and there’s no use case and you’re just preaching to your own choir, and that’s fair,

1:16:17 But I also feel, feel that there’s a lot of great companies and ideas that don’t get a shake because token prices are so depressed.

1:16:27 So Yatsu is also a friend of mine. I think he’s a visionary, and I think what you’re saying is true, and I think this is where the great flush is going to happen. So utility, tokenization, creativity on the blockchain, that is going to be in existence, and there will be a sleeve of tokens and a sleeve of technologies that work. There will also be a hiving of ones that don’t. And so if you’ve got 20,000 tokens that if I went to, I don’t know, CoinGecko or I went to one of these crypto sites to look up the data on where these tokens are trading, I’ll submit to you that 20,000 of them are too many.

1:17:13 Are there going to be 25 or 30 of them that are going to have real use cases and are going to be part of our story going forward? Yes. The question is hard to figure out which are which. And so somebody like Animoca and his team is going to do a good job of that. And we’ll be sitting here five years from now, there’ll be two or three things plucked from his portfolio that are working beautifully.

1:17:34 And it’ll have made a great, it would have been a great story to hold the investment. It’s hard to see right now because we’ve had a wash-out in the altcoin market, and that wash-out in the altcoin market is going to persist for a while and Bitcoin’s dominance is quite high, and so, you know, I’m not worried about it. I’m not afraid of it. But that’s what’s happening. And so I can’t tell you who the winners are.

1:18:06 But if you said to me, if I had money with Yatsu at Animoca, is he going to have a few of those winners based on his vantage point, his skill set, his international understanding of things? I think the answer to that is yes.

1:18:20 Debuting on the MA on the NASDAQ very soon, apparently.

1:18:23 Exactly.

1:18:23 What did you like about American Bitcoin? Just real briefly before we wrap up. I had heard something that he might have been getting some of the cheapest power in the world with like West Texas natural gas, but maybe I heard that wrong. I think I heard Eric talk at Toronto.

1:18:39 No, no, Eric is right about that. No, they cut a great deal where they’re getting very cheap power to fuel these Bitcoin miners. I think one of the big problems right now is that the price of Bitcoin is below the cost to mine Bitcoin right now. So, there’ll be a difficulty adjustment and there’ll be things that happen that allow for that to be reset. That’s the beauty of Bitcoin, by the way.

1:19:00 But it’s a pretty simple story. I just got done with making the DAT case to you, Brian, and now if I told you I could add a minor that can produce the Bitcoin at a wholesale rate, if I could get the wholesale production of Bitcoin and add it to the DAT, is that like sort of a little bit more of an exponential story? I think the answer is yes. Is that a very good competent management team? I think the answer is yes.

1:19:31 And let’s talk about Eric Trump for a second. I’ve known Eric for 15 years. Incidentally, him and I have the same birthday. Like you and my son have the same birthday. Eric and I, I always tease Eric.

1:19:43 I say, “Please thank your father for making our birthday famous. We’re both born on the 6th of January.” But Eric is a very smart guy and he’s very much so up to speed on the crypto space, and so you can like Eric or dislike him. You can like his father or dislike him, but I’m an objective person analyzing the business. Is Eric helping that business in terms of opening doors for them and preaching the good story of Bitcoin?

1:20:09 He is. Is the management team underneath Eric that’s working on this sophisticated, great financial engineers and really understand what they’re doing in terms of power acquisition and mining they are, and so the combination of those two things, my son AJ, who’s a Stanford business school graduate, we took hold of that and we secured a lot of money for their financing, and frankly we put a lot of our family’s money into the financing, and I took Eric with me to the Bitcoin conference. And I interviewed him.

1:20:41 I think people were shocked. By the way, like, what the hell is Scaramucci doing with a Trump? Well, you know what we’re doing? There’s a red team and there’s a blue team, Brian, but there’s also an orange team known as Bitcoin. I’m not talking about Trump’s hair or his spray tan.

1:20:54 I’m talking about Bitcoin. And so, I think we got to be bipartisan on that. And so we’re both on the Orange Party. We tease each other. But, you know, look, man, you know, we’re New Yorkers, by the way, okay?

1:21:08 You know, Trump and I are fighting like New Yorkers. How do New Yorkers fight? We fight. No, that’s what we do. Okay.

1:21:14 It doesn’t mean, you know, we have no, you know, Trump, you know, I mean, that it is what it is, Brian. You know, what are you going to do? You lived here in New York. You know what it’s like.

1:21:21 Yeah, I do. And yeah, I’ve been impressed. I’ve watched Eric speak a lot and have been very impressed. And it sounds like their dad put him through the ringer when they were kids, and you know, made them work on those building sites and made him listen to the, you know, the Polish marble guys and do whatever they said, and, you know, and again, he went through hell, most subpoenaed man I think in the world during that whole thing, and, you know, comes out still with a smile, and so yeah, and good for you, man.

1:21:49 I’m so happy to hear that, and I’m so glad that you know you can be on stage with him and and just keep everything moving forward. What’s next for the Mooch? What happens over the next few years? Obviously, we didn’t really get into it, but the show The Rest Is Politics US. It’s huge.

1:22:06 It’s huge here as well. The UK version, it was great to see you there again. I see the clips. I see the numbers. It’s amazing.

1:22:14 What’s next for you? More of the same. More SALTs, more crypto, more SkyBridge. So, the answer to that question is all three of those things. You know, more SALT, more crypto, more SkyBridge.

1:22:31 I hope. I got first of all, I got to stay above ground like you. And then the secondary thing is I’ve been blown away at the success of the podcast. Katty Kay, who I think you may know, she’s the British journalist that lives in DC. She works for the BBC, also works on Morning Joe, which is now at MS Now.

1:22:50 She’s a brilliant journalist. She’s a great foil, counterfoil to me. And I think we have a fun podcast that we try to keep it real, guy, try to keep it in objective, but also provide insight. And I’m critical of the president when I think he deserves to be criticized, and vice versa. And it’s weird because some people really like that, Brian.

1:23:09 Some people don’t. You know, Megyn Kelly, she’s for the president, even if she has to say that, you know, you’re not a pedophile if you’re with a 16-year-old, which I can’t figure that out. Flip side of it is you’ve got Rachel Maddow. She’s against the president. You know, he could got cure cancer and she would demolish him.

1:23:26 But I, if you’re asking me, is there space for some objectivity in the political process and some analysis, and also a deep dive into the personalities because I’ve lived it. You know, as you pointed out, I was with the president for almost a year on the campaign plane and I know almost all the personalities that are around him. I think it provides for a fun story, and it provides for a fun narrative. And so if you go to The Rest Is Politics US on podcast locations like Spotify or Apple, and you dial into it, I think you’ll, I think you’ll be entertained.

1:24:01 Also, you know, I know how to take the piss out of myself. You know, you know that expression you guys like to use in the UK. I’m not, I don’t see myself that seriously. So, I think it also makes for some entertainment that way, too.

1:24:15 All right. So, more of that, more on the Anthony Scaramucci YouTube channel. SALT is twice a year or does it

1:24:22 It’s three times a year now. We’re going to do one in Bermuda in May, obviously. Love to have you. We’re going to do one in August in Wyoming. We’re planning on potentially doing one in London next November.

1:24:32 I’d love to, of course, have you there, maybe even do your podcast from there.

1:24:36 But here’s what I would say to you, though. I’m writing a book right now, and it’s not a pmic on Trump or anything like that. It is literally just an observation of what happened over the last 30 years in American society in terms of policy missteps and how we got a very large group of people, particularly middle and lower income people disenfranchised with the establishment. How did that happen? You know, what led to the rise of Trump?

1:25:06 What led to the rise of populism in the UK? There’s some elements of it are globalization. Some of it are bad policy missteps, Brian. And I’ve written a 320-page book that I submitted to Penguin Random House two weeks ago. By the way, it’s going to get published in September of next year.

1:25:26 And I’d love if you you know, if it’s not an imposition, I’d love to come back on with you and discuss that, you know, in and around publication date, because I think it’s a story coming from somebody that has some political experience but also an economist that’s worked on Wall Street, and, by the way, what did Wall Street see that they got right? What did Wall Street see that we got wrong? And, you know, and honestly, what did I see that I got wrong? You know, it’s a good exposition of those ideas.

1:25:54 And your family comes from, you know, that socioeconomic group, right?

1:25:59 Yeah. Which I think gives me an advantage. You know, I’ll tell you this story just quickly. Like one of my core memories as a kid is I was telling Katty Kay this story. It was like March of 1972.

1:26:13 The eight-year-old young Anthony Scaramucci coming through the side door of my house back from school, cuz my school was right up the block. I used to walk home. was when we had untethered latch-key children, right? We weren’t I walked home,

1:26:25 Right? I opened the door to the side, door to the house, come into the house by the kitchen,

1:26:32 And my grandmother and my mother are like ecstatic. And I’m like, what’s going on? They’re so happy. And then they explained to me that while I was away at school, a washer and dryer was delivered into the basement of my, our unfinished basement, our unfinished house. And I don’t know, I was eight years old.

1:26:53 It’s a core memory for me.

1:26:55 But now that I’m an adult, I look back, I’m like, okay, my mom and my nana, they used to take the laundry to the public laundromat, and they would put nickels, dimes, and quarters in to wash the clothes. And now here they are. My grandmother was in her late 60s, and they finally got a washer and a GE washer and dryer, Bryant, in the house. Wow.

1:27:16 Where they don’t have to leave the house to do the laundry. And so I say that with pride because I came from a family of very hardworking people. I managed to get to TUS and Harvard Law School and Goldman and build some successful businesses. So I’ve seen the whole bandwidth of the economic strata, from you know, economic tightness to economic aspiration and financial independence. And I think it’s given me a perspective.

1:27:44 I think it’s given me a perspective to look at people with some psychological mindedness and some empathy for the rich and poor.

1:27:53 I love it. Congrats on the book. Damn, you’re prolific, Anthony. Yeah. You know,

1:27:58 I’m having a lot of fun. I’m like you. I’m an energetic guy. I don’t dress as well as you, but I’m moving around a lot like you, Brian.

1:28:05 And we share the same tailor, by the way, which I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I’ve never met anyone in the world that actually shares my tailor. And the Mooch is one of it. You can’t tell.

1:28:14 There you go. And that’s coincidental, by the way. You didn’t refer me to him. Although, the way you’re dressed, I would ask for the referral, actually.

1:28:21 Yeah, it’s a great story about the washing machine. I, funny enough, it’s not the same thing, but I remember when we got our first microwave. And what did we do? We actually melted a cube of ice in a glass.

1:28:33 Of course.

1:28:33 You know, of all the things to do with a microwave, we melted the ice, right?

1:28:38 You know, of course you did.

1:28:39 Of course we did. Right. Exactly.

1:28:40 Right.

1:28:42 Yes. Let’s have you back on for the book. I recommend everyone go and download The Rest Is Politics US. It’s amazing. You’re getting crazy numbers.

1:28:51 And I know numbers and I watch your YouTube numbers. They’re crazy. And I’m sure the downloads are even more. Anthony Scaramucci has his own YouTube channel. Couple hundred thousand followers.

1:28:59 Let’s get them up to the gold button on that. SALT Conference is amazing. Your one in Wyoming, I think for the first time ever actually had a bunch of the Fed governors there. Yeah, we had two Fed governors and we had Paul Atkins, my friend who’s the SEC chair. And next year, if I’m lucky, we’ll have Brian Rose.

1:29:17 All right, I’ll send you the dates.

1:29:18 I’m coming. You’ve been inviting me for a long time, and so I’m definitely coming. And of course, SkyBridge, and again, follow this man for incredible crypto and blockchain insights. Mooch, awesome to see you.

1:29:30 Great to be on with you, brother. And I’ll see you. I’ll see you in London. I’ll be there. I’m coming over to see you.

1:29:34 Okay, come look me up. Sending lots of love to the family. Sending lots of love to you, Mooch. We love you.

1:29:40 Same here. Vice versa, brother.

1:29:41 All right. Bless you, brother. Guys, follow this man. We’ll see you next time on London.

1:29:45 We’re good. We’re good. It’s all recorded. Downloaded. I don’t have to worry.

1:29:47 I’m going to, I’m going to hang up.

1:29:49 Done.

1:29:49 You’re the man. God bless. Sending you kisses. Happy Thanksgiving, man. Even though you live in the UK.

1:29:53 Thank you. We’re making a turkey. Thank you.