In short
Episode topic: A wide-ranging discussion on America’s long-term economic and political problems, market concentration, and how crypto/Bitcoin could counter centralization; plus a Fed-day market segment and crypto market liquidity.
Guests and backgrounds
Anthony Scaramucci, founder/CEO of Skybridge Capital; former White House communications director/press role for 11 days. Bimnet Abibi, from Galaxy Trading (market commentary).
Key claims
Scaramucci argues wealth concentration (“Mag-7”/sevenopoly) drives wealth and political polarization, citing Citizens United (2010) and social-media algorithms. He says elites’ indifference and crony capitalism fuel nationalism and democratic socialism/MAGA dynamics. He frames money printing as harming asset-poor workers. He argues permissionless blockchains decentralize power and “take the keys” from central bankers. He blames Sam Bankman-Fried’s ethics for much of the anti-crypto backlash.
Notable examples
67% of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck; government shutdown affecting paychecks; SNAP/food insecurity figures (42M needing food assistance). Scaramucci’s personal SBF interaction: 4.5 hours testifying to DOJ/SEC/FBI/IRS and turning over phones/Slack; he says SBF lied “knowingly and willfully.” He also claims SEC chair Gary Gensler delayed spot Bitcoin ETFs but “burned out” leveraged firms, leaving a firmer ETF launch base. Mentions Scaramucci’s Special Forces reality show stunts.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOPreviewing the Discussion with Bimnet Abibi
0:45 to 1:44
Hosts discuss expectations for the Fed Day and market conditions.
“He joins us, and it's a really fascinating conversation.”
Analyzing Fed Day Expectations
1:44 to 6:00
Bimnet shares insights on the Fed's approach and market implications.
“We are recording at 11 o 'clock Central Time.”
Concerns About the American Economy
6:00 to 11:52
Discussion on the economic challenges facing American consumers amidst market highs.
“And so that's why it makes sense that they're ending, you know, QT because that's net draining reserves from the marketplace.”
Fragility of the Crypto Market
11:52 to 13:08
Bimnet discusses the current state and volatility of the cryptocurrency market.
“Similar to the way the crypto markets itself looks like one, but maybe that will alter the liquidity profile over time as well.”
Reflections on the Crypto Industry
13:08 to 14:00
Insights on the growth and challenges of integrating traditional finance with crypto.
“And coupled with the denting of the liquidity profile makes it feel a little fragile at this moment.”
Market Reflections
14:00 to 14:26
Discussion on market valuations and progress needed for growth.
“And I think in terms of like what's currently baked into prices and valuations, like is assuming that A lot of that is going to get done.”
Wall Street Then and Now
14:32 to 15:10
Scaramucci reflects on the cultural shifts in Wall Street from the 80s to now.
“I wish my brain was as big as the Galaxy.”
Democratization of Brokerage
15:10 to 16:42
Exploring how brokerage firms like Schwab changed the financial landscape.
“How would you characterize the difference between the famous Wall Street 80s, which you were young and came right into, versus the culture on Wall Street now?”
Concentration and Wealth Disparity
16:42 to 17:50
Discussion on market concentration and its effects on wealth disparity.
“All those things I think are better for the system.”
The Political Fallout of Wealth Disparity
17:50 to 23:01
Exploring how wealth disparity drives political and social divides.
“When you create great wealth disparity, you get both economic anxiety and political anxiety.”
Show all 25 chapters
The Rise of Populism
23:01 to 23:36
Scaramucci discusses the rise of nationalism and populism in America.
“And they're not focused on trying to deepen the prosperity and to create aspirational arcs of living for non-rich people.”
Crypto as a Solution
23:36 to 24:42
Examining the potential of crypto to counter centralization issues.
“That train is leaving the station and it's heading for a brick wall.”
Dunbar's Number and Social Responsibility
24:42 to 26:46
Discussion on the limitations of human connections in a global context.
“So if I own a big house somewhere, you're printing money, the house is going to go up in value.”
The Failure of Modern Capitalism
26:46 to 28:00
Critique of current capitalism and its effects on society and the economy.
“It goes on in other countries where we don't have this understanding of good social engineering and good social policy.”
The State of Social Assistance in America
28:00 to 29:32
Discussion on the issues surrounding food insecurity and crony capitalism in the U.S.
“We've got this rampant crony capitalism.”
The Role of Crypto in Political Discourse
29:32 to 30:48
Exploration of how cryptocurrency aligns with progressive movements and affects politics.
“I think it's a very compelling analysis, Anthony.”
Sam Bankman-Fried and Political Fallout
30:48 to 33:30
Analysis of the political repercussions following the actions of Sam Bankman-Fried.
“White House officials from the Biden administration came in and they took notes and the crypto people were complaining about what was going on.”
Biden’s Administration and Crypto Regulation
33:30 to 35:57
Discussion on the Biden administration's stance on cryptocurrency and its implications.
“If you're above 55 and you're in the Democratic Party, you probably hate crypto.”
Reflections on Trust and Ethics in Business
35:57 to 38:13
Anthony Scaramucci shares his personal experiences and insights on trust within finance.
“What can you tell us about your interactions with Sam, by the way?”
The Future of Cryptocurrency Regulation
38:13 to 42:01
Discussion on the challenges and potential for bipartisan cryptocurrency regulation.
“And if he just handled himself better or he had better risk management in place, had he grown up at Goldman Sachs like Mike Novogratz or myself, he would have had a much stricter way of handling things.”
Regulatory Challenges in the Crypto Industry
42:01 to 43:19
Learn about the complexities of post-partisan regulation for the crypto industry.
“So really Gensler, you know, even though I think he's the worst SEC chairman in the history of the SEC, he probably helped the industry by accident.”
The Evolution of the SALT Conference
43:20 to 44:26
Discover the history and current status of the SALT conference and its significance.
“So we used to do it in Vegas, you know, but it was pre-COVID.”
Building a Collaborative Future for America
44:27 to 45:48
Explore the importance of identifying problems and collaborating to find solutions.
“And no matter what stripe you are politically, we should all get in the boat and row for Bitcoin.”
JFK's Insight on Problem-Solving
45:49 to 46:30
Reflect on JFK's famous quote about man-made problems and their solutions.
“That was, not to correct you, but that was a separate speech.”
Experiences on Special Forces Reality Show
46:31 to 47:45
Hear about Anthony Scaramucci's intense experiences on a reality show involving military training.
“That's coming to what you're saying, too.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Alex Thorn:Welcome to Galaxy Brains.
0:25Alex Thorn:Welcome back to Galaxy Brains. As always, I'm your host, Alex Thorne, head of firm-wide research at Galaxy. Bitcoin, not zero. We have a great episode for you today. Anthony Scaramucci, founder and CEO of Skybridge Capital, famously or infamously the communications director for the White House or press secretary for 11 days. He joins us, and it's a really fascinating conversation. I think Anthony has thought deeply and passionately about the problems with the American economy. I think he comes off as an incredibly well-thought and well-read practical centrist with deep analysis. We're going to talk to him about what is wrong with the American economy long-term, how to fix it.
1:04Alex Thorn:Of course, I will also ask him about his relationship with Sam Bankman-Fried and his appearance on an outrageous and great reality show, Special Forces. That's a fun interview you will not want to miss. And of course, before that, we'll check with Bimnet Abibi from Galaxy Trading. Big day today, Fed day. The Fed is cutting, and we're entering a dovish period, but the markets are nonetheless a bit fragile. We're starting to feel pretty high up here on this mountaintop. Before we get to all of that, I need to remind you to please refer to the link to the disclaimer in the podcast notes. And note that none of the information in this podcast constitutes investment advice or an offer, recommendation, or solicitation by Galaxy or any of its affiliates to buy or sell any securities.
1:43Alex Thorn:Let's hop right into the show with Bimnet Abibi. let's go now to our friend bimnet abibi from galaxy trading bimnet welcome to galaxy brains thanks for having me we are here in new orleans it's been a great week we had the galaxy gravity conference an invite only uh gathering of our friends and clients and um it's been quite fun it's been amazing and you are clearly are you must be about to go golfing i am about to go because you are you look like clients yes you look like my like you know my dad about to like go to a PTA meeting in the suburbs or something. I was born to go to PTA meetings. Let's get into it.
2:21Alex Thorn:Today is a big day. It is Fed Day. We are recording at 11 o 'clock Central Time. So obviously the announcement hasn't even come out. And the press conference won't be for a few hours. But what do you expect the Fed will do today? Yeah, the Fed will cut. they will probably confirm the end of QT. They will say that they're data dependent in terms of whether or not they cut in December. But it's a really challenging backdrop because the government shut down. We don't have data. And we've already cut a good amount. And the question is, is the labor market softening? is there going to be inflationary pressures from the tariff policy, which we haven't seen yet.
3:13And so it's a really hard kind of set of conditions. But overall, I expect a dovish tone because they are cutting and they are expected to continue cutting in December and later into 2026. And so I expect a dovish message. But in the context of market pricing, which is already kind of pricing in a lot of easing activity, like it might kind of be received as hawkish just because of how much easing is already kind of baked into the marketplace.
3:48Alex Thorn:Yeah, that makes sense. And will we get something interesting in terms of economic analysis out of the Fed this time that we might not have because the government's own data is not really being public, but the Fed has their own data? Like is this like one of the rare times when there's a discrepancy between what the U.S. government is publishing versus what the Fed knows. Yeah, but you know, and this is a point that a lot of market participants don't get is they look at the trends in the data. One month of data does not inform their decision-making. It is about what has happened over the last three to six months.
4:26And what does that tell you about what you need to do over the course of the next three to six months? And so this point-by-point analysis that the market likes to do. Like, oh, as if one non-farm payrolls print is going to really move the needle for these guys. Like, no. Like, what happened was there was revisions to months of non-farm payroll data. And that, like, gave you, like, a really clear picture of where the labor market was. And it was on worse footing than people thought. And that's why it was appropriate to become more dovish. And so, you know, I think Powell will kind of lean on that, that one month of data or a couple months of data isn't really kind of like the litmus test for whether or not they ease.
5:09And so I think he'll do his job there. But I think what's really important, though, is kind of the front end kind of rate dynamics or technical dynamics in terms of money market stuff. You've had some elevated sofa prints recently and some small usage of the staining repo facility. It's negligible at this point. But it does kind of seem like you're getting to the point where, you know, reserves are no longer abundant in money markets. And you're moving, you know, closer to ample to a little bit less than ample. And so eventually, you know, what that means is that, you know, the Fed will probably have to do some form of temporary open market operations, you know, by a standing repo facility or buy some T-belves.
5:54but they probably at some point do need to like inject a little bit of liquidity into the marketplace. And so that's why it makes sense that they're ending, you know, QT because that's net draining reserves from the marketplace. And so there's some technical stuff there, but I don't think it'll be addressed in this meeting. But high level, you know, what really strikes me though, and I don't think it's like getting enough coverage, But like I saw a headline the other day that, you know, 67 % of Americans right now are living paycheck to paycheck. Now, it's been elevated for a while. But why it's important now more so than ever is you have a government shutdown.
6:32There are, you know, the government is the largest employer in the U.S. And there's a bunch of people not getting checks.
6:37Alex Thorn:It's pretty brutal. Right. And then you have, you know, these health care, you know, premium increases that are coming for next year. And so I feel like, you know, the U.S. consumer, you know, it might not be in a great spot. Right. And you wouldn't get that if you looked at where the stock market is, right? You know, we're talking about the stock market that's at all-time highs. That's made 37 fresh all-time highs this year. I mean, we were at all-time high, I think, what, Monday closed? All the indices on all-time highs. I mean, NVIDIA is now a$5 trillion company. like i you know somebody was saying today they are now officially in the too big to fail kind of camp well because they're also driving so much of the market yeah correct but you know a handful of names you know comprise like almost half of the s &p so it's not really like the best barometer for like are people doing well is the economy fine right right when you look at other things which you know if you look at the rate market pricing like you know they're expecting like pretty easy policy and i don't think it's a function of like oh you know trump's gonna put in more more dovish people i think it's more like it's time to be dovish it's time to be a little dovish and you know and yeah so there's there's a lot of weird things in in the marketplace right now but i haven't been this anxious about markets like basically well since the tariff rollout yes since prior prior yeah prior to that but like right now i'm feeling like a little uneasy markets at risk markets are priced to perfection still right credit spreads are still really tight ig ig high yield you name it is tight you know uh equities like the valuations are very very high yes um and the and it's so crazy people talk you know that are bullish equities they're like there there's nothing gonna stop it there's no catalyst the feds easy government spending but i'm like you look at the valuations and depending on how you look at them, like you are like very close to dot-com bubble like levels, right?
8:42And if you, you know, one of the metrics was price to free cash flow ratio, right? Like basically Microsoft is already at like their 99 levels. Yeah. And like other things, you know, like that you can slice and dice the data and the valuation metrics and you can be like, well, you know, it's not really that bad.
9:02Alex Thorn:Couldn't it be like You look at people in 2013, people thought Bitcoin at$800,$1 ,200 was this unbelievable blow off top, and now you can't even see it on the chart. Couldn't that happen, theoretically? It's totally possible. I mean, when you hear about all the grand promises that the AI promoters have for how it can overhaul the entire economy, couldn't that make the dot-com bubble actually look like a blip one day? I don't know. That would be the bull case, basically, right? I mean, I think the market has brought forward as much of those future returns as humanly possible right now. Got it. I know people are really bad at predicting the future, especially with tech that is insanely transformative.
9:48But at the same time, I know that a billion dollars tomorrow is probably worth a little less than a billion dollars.
9:58Alex Thorn:Yeah, and your point, too, is there's not like a deficit of bullishness in the market about this. It's not like people haven't figured out the AI story. It's been driving the whole thing. Real quick before we wrap, what's your take on Bitcoin? Ranging in like the$1.12. We had a big drop actually. It looked like on that Monday when stocks were doing well. Bitcoin's up to like$1.155 or so,$7. And then we just dumped 3 % back to like this, you know, right around$1.10 plus range. Yeah, I think the crypto market's incredibly fragile, and it stems from the fact that you had one of the largest liquidation events like about three weeks ago.
10:34Yeah. We haven't fully rebuilt that foundation yet here. There's a lot of market makers that got hurt, a lot of long-only levered, long type of guys that got hurt. And what it's led to is just a decrease in liquidity.
10:49Alex Thorn:Yeah. And it's a lot easier to push price if you are a sizable player in the market. and what you see is, you know, like, oh, U.S. stock market's closed, it's 4 to 5 o 'clock or it's a Friday afternoon and there's no liquidity. Like, yeah, one big sell order and you're talking like, you know, down a percent and a half like that and that triggers like liquidations and then it's like into a thin market. And so it's very vulnerable. And I think that's why, you know, I'm, you know, also concerned about, you know, Bitcoin and broader crypto right now is that, you know, that liquidity and that like lack and that increase in volatility is a function of that.
11:31Right. Doesn't bring people into the market. It takes them out.
11:34Alex Thorn:Yeah. Yeah. That's a fragile, I think, as you said, it's fragile. What are they, what a Rob used to say, liquidity risk. It's the mother of all risks. I think, to be honest, I think many people probably say that, but no, but, but liquidity is, is a really like important factor because one, yeah. One way to assess whether you're in a bullish market is if it's becoming more liquid, not less liquid. Correct. Right. normally that's what happens like if your thesis is right it goes from being really illiquid to very liquid and way worth way more right uh and so right now it's it's it's very hard and especially if you're trafficking in anything that you know isn't bitcoin or eth yeah right it is a little uncomfortable because they're much smaller i mean they're already much less liquid yeah i'm interested to see what happens with these etfs there's a long tail of them now that have launched I don't expect, I think that's going to look a lot like a power law distribution ultimately.
12:24Alex Thorn:Similar to the way the crypto markets itself looks like one, but maybe that will alter the liquidity profile over time as well. Yeah, potentially, absolutely. The big Bitcoin ones have improved liquidity situations. Absolutely. I just don't know if the rest of the communities are as strong as the Bitcoin and ETH crowd. and Solana. But in terms of the other assets in the space, I think the folks that have wanted to invest in those assets already have. You're not feeling like right at this moment there's a wave of new interest flowing into crypto. Correct. And coupled with the denting of the liquidity profile makes it feel a little fragile at this moment.
13:14I don't want to go too long, but But at this conference, I've kind of been reflecting upon what has this industry done. And obviously stablecoins are great. Great use case. Interest-bearing stablecoins, remittances, receivables, all sorts of great things coming out of stablecoins. And the RWA stuff is also fantastic. But again, there's not really much. It's pretty nascent. It's nascent. It's early. we are in the early innings of, you know, taking traditional finance and getting them to, you know, crypto rails.
13:50Alex Thorn:Yeah. Right. And that is a multi-year process. Yeah. These institutions are, you know, like large oil rigs trying to make a return. Yeah. Like it just takes time. Yeah. And I think in terms of like what's currently baked into prices and valuations, like is assuming that A lot of that is going to get done. Yep. But we have years and years of progress to make before we actually get to what's expected in current valuations. It's kind of my view. I love it. Bim Netta BB, my friend from Galaxy Trading. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Let's go now to Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital.
14:29Alex Thorn:Welcome to Galaxy Brains, Anthony. Galaxy Brains, man. I wish my brain was as big as the Galaxy. Unfortunately, it's a limited capacity brain. It's like that meme where, like, the, you know, First, it's just a little bit of glow, and eventually he's spinning the universe. That's the Galaxy Brains meme. I think it's a pejorative, actually. You're supposed to be making fun of someone who thinks they're really smart, but we're twisting it. I've been humbled by life and markets, so I don't think I'm really smart, but I'm persistent. True. Well, you're still here, by the way. How long have you been in markets sort of as an active player?
15:0037 years, nine bare markets. I'm sort of the same vintage as Novo.
15:05Alex Thorn:So that puts you at, what, 1988? 1988, 89? 1988, exactly. How would you characterize the difference between the famous Wall Street 80s, which you were young and came right into, versus the culture on Wall Street now? Well, the Wall Street 80s was very patriarchal. I know this is really going back in history, but May Day was May 1st, 1975, where the SEC actually deregulated the commission structure. So we had regulated commissions where the brokerage firms were charging everybody the same rack rate. Of course, Charles Schwab took that and created the first discount broker. So by 1989, we were still charging a discount off of the rack rate.
15:48And it was very parochial, high fixed fees. Wall Street was a old man, white man's club. And it's become more democratized. It's been more decentralized. Yeah.
16:03Alex Thorn:Did the retail brokerages like Schwab, Fidelity, obviously now Robinhood, things like that. What role did that play in the democratization? Well, I mean, Schwab was a big player. Fidelity was a big player. Fidelity was more on the mutual fund side than they were brokerage. They sort of migrated to brokerage at sort of the beginning of the 2000s. But Schwab was out there offering discounts. I mean, he built a legendary business. He was probably the Robinhood of his time. I'm sure Charles Schwab would have built Robinhood if he had the technology and the bandwidth to do that back in 1978. but the good news for where we are now, it's a much flatter system.
16:41It's way more liquid. There's a lot more activity. It's cheaper to access. All those things I think are better for the system. I'm not in love with the concentration. I think that's, for me, when you look at it historically, you have a Mag 7. I'll take you way back to the 1970s. We had something called the Nifty 50. We had concentration issues into 2000 going into the dot-com bubble. So the MAG-7, I think, are presenting a challenge for the markets. I also think there's an antitrust statement laced in there somewhere at some point that the government's going to have to address.
17:15Alex Thorn:That makes sense. They're getting massive, especially now with the AI CapEx investing that's happening. It's, you know, both the spenders and a lot of the recipients are all, it's all the same. And it's not totally true. I mean, there is real money there. It's not like purely reflexive or incestuous, but it's like Google paying NVIDIA, like NVIDIA. No, I saw that. There was a chart in the weekend paper about the incestuous loop that's been created. But I think that the bigger issue is when we concentrate power, you create great wealth disparity. When you create great wealth disparity, you get both economic anxiety and political anxiety.
17:57And so a very, very formidable conservative back in his day, probably not even considered a conservative now, Ronald Reagan. The decision was made in 1984. Judge Harold Green broke up AT &T. It was the big monolith phone company at the time. And they were sitting on a tremendous amount of technology. The irony is the technology that they were sitting on ultimately made the Mag-7 capable. Yeah, connectivity. Computing, connectivity, internet, retail shopping through Amazon, Netflix streaming, all this stuff Bell Laboratories was sitting on. And so what happens is when you have a concentration, you know, it's not a duopoly because that would be two people.
18:39It's sort of a sevenopoly. When you create this level of concentration, you sit on technology. The end user gets hurt from the lack of innovation. But listen, the money's funneled into the system to protect those guys. And I think it's actually very dangerous. It's very dangerous to the market.
18:56Alex Thorn:Is there like an ebb and flow in capitalism generally where it's like – I think another recent one is like the unbundling of cable TV into like all these streaming services. And at first it was great, but now you're like, wait, I'm paying for seven of these streaming services. Like wouldn't it be great if you could rebundle them? I'm like, I want my cable box back. Is that kind of what happens in general? Well, remember you had less flexibility with the cable box because you had appointment television with the cable box. So this gives you a little bit more versatility and flexibility. But I think if you're making the point, will these things merge, like Hulu, Mascan and Disney, I think you're going to go through periods of that.
19:33But you're in a totally different age, which is why your podcast is doing well. Other podcasts are doing well. I think people are inundated with information, but what they want is intimacy and they want authenticity. And so that's what you're benefiting from. That's why these podcasts are so successful.
19:51Alex Thorn:You talked about one of the consequences of the concentration is also wealth disparity. There's been a lot of talk of that. It's very obvious in the data that it's sort of only gotten worse over the last 15 years, certainly since the great financial crisis in 08 and 09. How big of a driver – you said that can cause economic and social – how big of a driver is that of the – I don't know if it's historic, but certainly significant, for example, partisan divide in this country, very divided country America. Well, I mean, there's a lot of things that have happened. So let's provide a quick historical analysis.
20:25Thing number one, Ross Perot enters the race in 1992, gets 19 % of the vote, scares the daylights out of the two parties. So they toughen up and tighten their duopoly. They make it impossible for a third party. So now they've got sort of complacency and they're able to gerrymander for each other. They're able to protect their silos of power. and then that's caused some level of polarity on its own. Number two, in the age of social media, the algorithms are designed to create tribalism and to create hateful screeds because what we do, we rubberneck car crashes, we rubberneck verbal car crashes and the more violent the algorithm is, the more time we're going to spend on it and so we've allowed these social media companies and our adversaries for that matter, China, North Korea and Russia, to be in the game and the big companies allow that because they want more, even if they're robust, they want more followers, they want more activity.
21:21And so that has made us a little bit more tribal, a little bit more polarized. And then the third thing, which I think is the most powerful thing, is Citizens United. Most Americans don't even know what that is. But in January of 2010, Justice Scalia rendered a decision which has really hurt America. He said, if you got unlimited amount of money, that's no problem. Your First Amendment right is to put that dough anywhere you want, including political causes, so you can support your candidates, you can support your ideas. And so this has led to an overwhelming legislative agenda in the United States that's big food, big pharma, kleptocracy, crony capitalism, tax cuts for the wealthy, and nothing for the engine or the middle class.
22:05And so the politicians literally don't care anymore. The big, beautiful spending bill gives a$7 ,000 benefit to somebody making a million dollars a year, takes away$700 of benefits from someone making$50 ,000 or less. But these guys don't care because they're getting unlimited amounts of money funneled to them. You know, the Congress has a 14 % approval rating. That's slightly above Kim Il-jung, the North Korean dictator. And yet 95 % of these guys get reelected because of the money funnel. And so when you put all those things into the soup, you have a catastrophe. And the big people, as has been pointed out at your conference, the Galaxy Conference, the big people have grown stone-cold hearts.
22:49They want bigger net worths. They want to be trillionaires. They want 300-foot yachts. And they're not focused on the mechanisms of good social engineering and noblesse oblige. And they're not focused on trying to deepen the prosperity and to create aspirational arcs of living for non-rich people. And so I grew up in an aspirational blue-collar family that was able to meet some measure of the American dream. Those very same families now feel economically desperational. So they're going to go towards nationalism. They're going to go towards democratic socialism, which is staggering to me in America that we're going in that direction, where we're going to go into right-wing populist nationalism, also known as MAGA.
23:36So all of those things to me are extremely dangerous and no end in sight. There's nobody stopping that train. That train is leaving the station and it's heading for a brick wall.
Read the full transcript
23:48Alex Thorn:I think it's a great place to transition. Surely then, and I've heard you speak about this, so this is a bit rhetorical, but surely then crypto and permissionless blockchains, you believe, are like a counterbalance perhaps to that centralizing and negativity? I do. I think that you've got Game, the programming team or the individual known as Satoshi Nakamoto, I think, looked at the global financial crisis and said, OK, we need a libertarian mechanism. We need something that's decentralizing and we need to take the keys away from the drunk driving central bankers. And so the politicians are drunk driving.
24:26The central banks are drunk driving. They're printing money now to try to temporarily get us out of these problems, but they're really hurting the poor and they're hurting the working class people. Because when you print money, you're stealing time and energy away from the poor. Remember, the poor don't have any assets. So if I own a big house somewhere, you're printing money, the house is going to go up in value. If I don't have any assets, I work with my time. You paid me$1 ,000. You got 8 % inflation. I now have$920 to spend. You stole 8 % of my life. So how could you not be angry if you're in that position and then you're going to react by seeking avatars of your anger?
25:05Those people would be people like Donald Trump or Mondami. So to me, I think it's very clear cut. It's fixable, but it's not going to be fixable if the people in power are like, hey, I don't care. As long as I'm able to stay in power and keep the gravy train running for me and my family, I don't care. But that's a big dilemma.
25:24Alex Thorn:It is. You know what Dunbar's number is, right? Is that the, no, I don't. Okay, so Dunbar's number is part of our evolutionary design where we have abilities to relate to approximately 150 people. This I know, yes. Your tribe, like beyond that, you just can't maintain more than that number of relationships. So all of this got us to this point in civilization because if you were hooking up with people and you had 150 people in a small little village and they were sharing the goods and services and sharing various trade mechanisms. and then that 150 people attached to another 150 people, you had a small city or a small village, and then you kept growing, you're now at the point where we've got 8 billion people interconnected.
26:07But we can't think about those 8 billion people. So when we take our plastic cup or plastic bottle and throw it in the air, we're not thinking, oh, geez, that's going to hurt the other 8 billion people. We don't have the psychology for that. But I think right now, we're going to need some level of transformational leadership to get people to think beyond Dunbar's number and to think beyond their little tribe and their little family. I don't want to be in a bob-wired, security-perimetered mansion. I'm sitting in my McMansion with this great big bob-wire and security guards while my fellow neighbors are suffering on the street.
26:44That goes on in South America. It goes on in other countries where we don't have this understanding of good social engineering and good social policy. and the U.S. is failing now. And it's really a direct result of a large group of insensitive and indifferent elites, which were very different from the generations that built America. Even Henry Ford, who was a great son of a bitch, by the way, understood that he had to create jobs where he once said, I'm going to make sure that the people on these jobs are making enough money to afford the products that they're actually developing. Okay, I'm going to put them in single family houses with good public school systems so they don't descend on my mansion with a tiki church and a pitchfork and take me out.
27:29We're not doing that anymore.
27:30Alex Thorn:It's like the incentives were aligned between the wealthy and the masses, right? Because everyone, they kind of, it's a sloppy history. They resisted the automotive unions in the beginning. They relented to the automotive unions. They resisted things like social security. They relented to them. FDR was once called a traitor to his class, But if you really step back over the 80 years, 81 years since he left the stage, you look back and say, wow, he was creating platforms, safety net-like platforms to actually protect the system. We're not doing that anymore. We've got this rampant crony capitalism.
28:07I mean, just think of what's going on with the SNAP programs. And so for people listening, you've got 42 million Americans, 12.1 % of the population that need food assistance. We have food insecurity in one of the richest countries in the history of the world, and you've got 12.9 % of the people that need it, and you've got an indifferent Congress that's basically about to give the bird to those people. You've got families that are worth half a trillion bucks, and yet their workers are getting sub-level wages to the point where they need food assistance from their government. If you think it's right, it's not right.
28:44And this is what, you know, if you don't want to fix it using market-based capitalism, what's going to happen is guys like Mandami are going to come in. They're going to beat the drum. AOC is going to beat the drum. And people are going to gravitate to their socialist causes, which, of course, never work throughout society.
29:00Alex Thorn:And they are gravitating towards it. I mean, Zoran Mandani is a great example. You're going to go to Trump, who is a wrecking ball. He's an orange wrecking ball that's going to get in the face of the establishment and piss them off. And that's okay for me because if the system's not working, let's let Trump burn down the system. So why not go back to what made America really great, which is the idea that we would work together and we would split the economic rent between capital and labor and not overtilt the economic rent, which we're doing right now, to capital. I think it's a very compelling analysis, Anthony.
29:35Alex Thorn:I want to ask a few more crypto-specific questions, though. I think it's very compelling. There's clearly a, it wasn't always perfect alignment, as you pointed out. It was always been messy, but the alignment has swung like too skewed now in favor of wealth. And by the way, it's stupid because if I was knocking on the brain of a trillionaire or a trillionaire wannabe, I'd say, you don't need the money, number one. There's a paradox of the money. How many shirts and yachts are you going to buy? Maybe you're doing it to keep score with a fellow trillionaire. But what you really need to do is make sure these people have aspirational living standards and their kids feel like they're going to do better so that you can create quietness in the social contract where we can all live peacefully together without some type of revolt.
30:22It's a study of history, man. Let me tell you something. The people come for you, man.
30:25Alex Thorn:Yeah, the revolt is inevitable. They come for you. Usually. They're going to set fire to your village if you don't watch it. Let them eat cake attitude. Yeah, it's stupid. Yeah, it is stupid. But crypto can be a positive force. Like, why haven't the Democratic Party, I mean, obviously there are now many more that are pro-crypto. But certainly it kind of came out of the Occupy Wall Street movement in a way. It was very similar overlap in the disruption seeking. Novo and I went to an event. This is, I'm going to take you back. It was July, 2024. We were there with Mark Cuban. We were sitting at a big table.
30:59Yeah, I remember this event. White House officials from the Biden administration came in and they took notes and the crypto people were complaining about what was going on. And they said, okay, great. We took your notes. Thank you for your attention to this matter. They left. And they put an even greater hurt on the crypto. Okay. So the crypto people said, okay, we're still in a democracy. Let's use the powers that we have to light up the people and fortify the people that believe in crypto. So the Democrats lost the House, the Senate, and the presidency, generally because they are establishment in their orientation tied to the American Banking Association and their lobby.
31:37It's very strange. And they decided, hey, even though crypto is weirdly progressive and even though crypto helps the unbanked and even though crypto creates opportunities for people all over the world, but particularly here in the United States, we're going to bring it to a halt. But people forget why. The real reason was Sam Bankman-Fried.
31:56Alex Thorn:Yeah. Because Sammy showed up in the house of Elizabeth Warren. He showed up privately with Gary Gensler. Sam's parents, who were both law professors at Stanford, were tight with those people. And they were trying to get Sam his license, okay, to compete with the CME and the New York Stock Exchange. So when Sam blew up, those two cats, Warren and Gensler, said, Whoa, we've got to do what every politician does. We have to shield ourselves and protect ourselves. And so we're going to go ape, full-on ape, anti-crypto. And I applaud Scott Bessette for saying this, okay, because before he began the Secretary of Treasury, he was on the airwaves.
32:34I think it was Fox Business. He looked right down the barrel of the camera and said, these are two people that are going after crypto for personal political preservation reasons. They're not even going after it any way that makes sense. Of course, Warren had a promise from Biden that she was going to run financial services, okay? And so, you know, Trump is also right about that. He was basically, it was like weekend of Joe Biden's. He had one foot on a banana peel, the other foot in the goddamn coffin. So he didn't know what the hell was going on. And you know how I know Joe Biden didn't know what was going on.
33:05Forget about Jake Tapper, okay? There were no firings in the Biden administration.
33:10Alex Thorn:Yeah. Okay, everybody had their own silos and they're like, okay, we're allowed to do whatever the hell we want. Trust me, in every administration, maybe Trump's first term more than others, but every administration, there's firings, but not in Joe Biden's administration, which is a sign he wasn't in control. Yeah, they were just on autopilot or something. He was - Terrible situation. So the demography is this. If you're above 55 and you're in the Democratic Party, you probably hate crypto. Yeah. If you're below 55 and you're in the Democratic Party, you're probably inclined to want to be a part of it.
33:44And you certainly don't want to be going up against well-funded Republicans that are pro-crypto.
33:48Alex Thorn:Seems like a pretty easy political message to learn. But if you hate Trump, which most of these Democrats do, and since Trump loves crypto, guess what you're going to do is a knee-jerk reaction. It is. You're going to hate crypto. Yeah, and that is, I think, the two big disputes right now in the Senate over that new market structure bill are about how to handle DeFi, if at all, and government ethics. I think the government ethics will stay out of the bill because that would kill the bill, obviously, if you ban the president or ban his ban, anything like that. Trump has slowed down the bill. If Trump had to launch a meme coin going into the inauguration, he blew up the meme coin industry.
34:24Alex Thorn:That was at the crypto ball, the so-called crypto ball in D.C. A lot of cryptos all there having a great time partying. No one sees the announcement. I remember this. We were all like, are you serious? Someone's like, Trump just launched a meme coin. It was mind-blowing when we were there. None of us thought because we were all having drinks at a ball. What that does is it upsets all of the older Democrats. They think what he's doing is outrageous and unethical. And so it slowed down the bills, you know. So everyone says, oh, Trump is great for crypto. Okay, listen, he's way better for crypto than Kamala Harris.
34:57I'm an objective person. But he has hurt crypto too with some of the self-dealing nonsense. He's definitely hurt crypto because it's slowed down the regulatory process. So, but if you're saying to me, which I believe you are, that the mechanisms are in place where Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies, represent a libertarian opportunity for people to grow and preserve their capital and to use these products and these technologies to their individual benefit. The answer to that is yes. And so it's another big reason why I'm such a big supporter of it.
35:35Alex Thorn:You were talking about Sam Bankman-Free and I agree. he deserves a lot of the blame for the ultimate backlash that happened from the SEC, from Warren and her camp. And there's also this other guy, Bharat Ramamurthy, and the National Economic Council inside the White House. They were all very—Brian Deese, very— Operation Choke Point 2.0. All that stuff came out of that. What—but you—SBF definitely to blame for a lot of this. What can you tell us about your interactions with Sam, by the way? Because, you know, you had a transaction with them. Yeah, no, listen, I'm always—I don't revise history. Yeah.
36:06Okay. I trusted Sam. I liked Sam. Unfortunately, I had to spend four and a half hours. I've had a few bad days in my life. Let's tell you one of my bad days. I spent four and a half hours downtown Southern District, U.S. Attorney's Office, SEC, FBI, IRS, New York State Securities Regs, on a Zoom, 20 people from the SEC in Washington, four and a half hours of testimony. I turned over my phones. I turned over my Slack. I turned over everything to the Department of Justice. I did a deal with Sam. And I'll say to you what I said to them. I like Sam. I trusted Sam. I saw Sam as sort of a savant genius.
36:53And I saw him as a Mark Zuckerberg of crypto. I didn't see the Bernie Madoff side of him. And I got it wrong. And so I have to own that for the rest of my life. But here's the thing I would tell younger people. I survived that. Skybird survived that because we live our lives with integrity. We didn't do anything wrong. We presented everything that we had to the SEC, every email. And I got it wrong. You know, 25 large-scale venture capitalists invested in Sam. Remember, Sam gave me the money.
37:24Alex Thorn:One number, Sam. Okay, I didn't give him the money. He gave me the money. So I took the money because I thought he was running a fantastic business. and I got it wrong. And I paid the piper for that. Hurt my career, hurt my reputation. I had probably three or four financial obituaries written about me during that period of time. Who hasn't? I'm still here. That's what happens to entrepreneurs. You take risks. That's right. It's not a Hollywood script entrepreneurship. You take risks. When you get stuff wrong, you get your ass handed to you and then you got to dust yourself off and go forward. And that's what we did.
37:57But I liked Sam. And I think the Sam story is a tragic story because he got a lot of things right from an investment perspective. He got Anthropic right. He got Sui right. He got Solana right. I could name 10 other things that he got right. But what he got wrong is his ethics. And if he just handled himself better or he had better risk management in place, had he grown up at Goldman Sachs like Mike Novogratz or myself, he would have had a much stricter way of handling things. and it's going to cost him 25 years of his life. You know, he'll probably get out, you know, before 25 years. But I'm just saying, he's already in jail for three and a half years as a result of this tragedy.
38:40Alex Thorn:Do you think he screwed up? Or is he, when you say he's Bernie Madoff, I mean, Bernie, that story kind of like... No, no, no, that guy's unethical. Look, I mean, look, I read the Infinite Jest or whatever the thing was called. What was it, Michael Lewis's Infinite Asshole? I don't know. I don't remember the name of the fucking book. I couldn't get past, like, the second chapter. I was so mad about his defense. Yeah, but I read the whole book. And Michael, I talked to Michael about that book because Michael came to the Crypto Bahamas. Yeah. He was following Sam around. Right. And he said, if I think Sam's doing something illegal, I'm not going to write the book.
39:10So he wrote the book as like an apologia for Sam. Yeah. But Sam was nefarious. Sam knowingly and willfully broke the law. This was our knowledge as well. We knew that he lied. Knowingly and willfully broke the law. And by the way, he lied straight to my face. Right. And one of the, again, more painful days for me was November the 8th. I flew to the Bahamas. I took a 6.30 AM JetBlue flight and went right to his apartment, looked him and his father in the eye, and then it was very clear to me that he had committed fraud. Yeah. Okay, so we want to whitewash it. Now we can. That's fine. If you want to provide him some sentence leniency, that's up to people that are inside the government, not me.
39:51But I know what he did. Okay, but I'm a forgiving guy, And so I have moved on with my life. And in a weird way, I'm going to say something positive about Gensler, okay, which probably surprised people. So Gensler broke the law. How did he break the law? The Bitcoin futures ETF was approved in November of 21. And so pursuant to administrative law in the United States, the Bitcoin cash or spot ETF should have been approved shortly thereafter. because they were right inside the bandwidth of each other. You can't be arbitrary and capricious with the administration of the law if the products are similar.
40:31That's in the code. That's right. But Gensler said NFW to the cash ETF. He rejected it. He forced the Grayscale lawsuit. But in that interregman period, he flushed out the industry. Okay, so you had the three IQ guys. You had the - Three AC. You had three arrows capital. Whatever it was called. You had that other guy, the, I don't know, the Ukrainian guy or whatever, he blew up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, all the different people that blew up.
40:58Alex Thorn:Yeah. And so all of that leverage, all of that flotsam in the industry got blown to pieces. And so weirdly, we rebuilt the industry way less levered and way less risked. That's an interesting point. Okay. And so weirdly, even though he broke the law and proof that he broke the law, he lost the lawsuit. Got smacked down on that ruling. By the DC Circuit Court. He got smacked down on the ruling, and so he didn't even want to appeal to the Supreme Court because he knew he was going to get smacked down again. So he had to bring the cash ETF in January of 24. But you're sort of like, because that dead wood got burned out, and however everyone described it, whatever analogy, by the time the ETFs did launch in January of 2024, much firmer ground.
41:42Yeah, and by the way, you would have been living in a SAM world. It's not impossible if that ETF got approved. that ETF would have been approved March, April of 22. That could have fueled another big lift for Bitcoin. And that could have potentially protected Sam's scam. Covered up his hole and maybe you never would have known. So really Gensler, you know, even though I think he's the worst SEC chairman in the history of the SEC, he probably helped the industry by accident.
42:09Alex Thorn:Let's not give him credit. Let's say it was an externality of his otherwise awful behavior. A positive externality. He helped the industry by accident. Very rare. These guys were true disasters. They set the industry back. And they said U.S. regulation back. You know, I mean, the challenge for us now, because of Trump's polarity, is how do we make the legislation and the regulation in the industry postpartisan? Yes. This is where I think Sachs has done a very good job. Because if you read that executive order from a couple of months ago about Bitcoin, he really doesn't want to buy Bitcoin using U.S.
42:42Treasury. He wants to sort of absorb Bitcoin through different ways that they can get it through custody action or the Department of Justice seizure. I think it's a smart thing because we want to transition Bitcoin and crypto in general from left-leaning or right-leaning regulation or policy to post-partisan. Like we don't debate whether oil or medical equipment or rare earth minerals are in our strategic reserve. And I don't think Bitcoin should be of any debate there either. And we've got to get there as a group of people, as a nation.
43:18Alex Thorn:It's very exciting. I want to ask about Salt. It's your conference business brand. I don't know what to call it. Yeah, we have a conference business. We started it in 2016. Is the primary one in Jackson Hole? Is that the main one? So we used to do it in Vegas, you know, but it was pre-COVID. Yeah. We then moved it to New York post-COVID. We've now decided that we're going to make it geographically mobile. Cool. Done it in Singapore a few times, Tokyo. We're doing a SALT conference in November in London. But the real crypto conference, the specific crypto conference, sort of the crypto native conference for us, we call it the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium.
43:57And so last August, we had Paul Atkins there, the SEC chair. We had Mickey and Waller, the two Fed governors.
44:07Alex Thorn:It's right around the Fed's annual meeting. So that's a cool juxtaposition. Yeah, we tried to make it adjacent to that so that we could get some of these leading policy people, active policy people. Also had Eric Trump there. I had the opportunity to interview Eric, which I think was fun because - Because his dad fired you, right? Yes, dad fired me and crypto's bipartisan. You know, there's a red party, a blue party, but there's also an orange party. And no matter what stripe you are politically, we should all get in the boat and row for Bitcoin. So I enjoyed interviewing Eric. and so this is sort of thought leadership, C-suite people, but more important than anything else for me because I've been running conferences for 17 years now, I want people to have fun.
44:48So I want people to learn something, meet somebody that's going to help them in the business, but also let's have a little bit of fun, you know? And so I always try to pick a venue where we can do something exciting for the delegates.
44:58Alex Thorn:Well, I really want to go to the one in Wyoming. Sounds very funny. I forget why. I was on vacation. Maybe we'll do this podcast again from Wyoming. Yeah, that would be great. Before we wrap, this has been amazing, by the way. Thank you for these insights about America. It really does feel like we're at this really quite pivotal moment. It's totally fixable. I don't want to leave the podcast with people thinking, oh, I'm a gloom and doomer. I'm not a gloom and doomer. I think what you have to do is you have to identify the problem. Then you can say, okay, now that I've got the problem identified, this is a man-made.
45:28You can say man and woman, but it's mostly men, trust me. So it's a man-made problem. And so we can fix the problem. If men make the problem, men and women can fix the problem.
45:39Alex Thorn:JFK said this famously in that speech about the moon. We will go to the moon and do the other things. He said, our problems are man-made, therefore they can be solved by man. I mean, he means mankind, men and women kind of. That was, not to correct you, but that was a separate speech. It wasn't the moon speech? The moon speech was down in Texas. You're right. The speech was in June of 1963 at American University. Okay, but yes. He got the honorary degree. Yes, yes. But that's his best speech. If somebody's listening here, you want to Google Kennedy's speech. He was solving for the Cold War, and he was about to get a nuclear test ban treaty signed with Nikita Khrushchev.
46:18And that's when he gave that speech. He said, we breathe the same air, we drink the same water, and our problems are stuff that we've created ourselves. We can fix these problems. So it's brilliant that you remembered that. I'm very impressed with you. That's coming to what you're saying, too. Look at you. You're half my age. All right. One more, though. You're bringing the knowledge, man.
46:36Alex Thorn:Especially my wife, because we were both obsessed with it. We were talking about this before. You starred on actually what is one of the best reality shows I've seen in years, Special Forces, where they take celebrities, athletes, business people. I was more like a fallen star, but I was getting my ass kicked on that show. They put you through military training, including hazing and also physical things like jumping from a helicopter, actually being pushed from a helicopter. Yeah, I got thrown out of a helicopter, backdive into the Red Sea. I got set on fire. I mean, I got fired from the White House, but it wasn't really my best fire.
47:14My best fire was getting my ass set on fire. I got sunk in a SUV. I had to wait for the seal to tap me on the back to let me swim out the back while I was trying to prevent myself from drowning. I mean, it was an absolute—I had a rappel down the side of a tower in the Gulf of Aqaba. and so I was scared shit the whole time. They put us in a tent. So when you were trying to fall asleep, it was 100 degrees. By 3 a.m. it was 45 degrees. Oh, God. So you're waking up in the middle of the night to get in your sleeping. You're like in the desert. You know, I wanted to see if I could control my fear in a physical environment and I was like, all right, this will probably give me some empathy for our special forces around the world, which it clearly has.
47:54Alex Thorn:Yeah, it was really cool. Well, Anthony, thank you so much. This has been a great interview. If you have a chance to do that, don't fucking do that, okay? I'll just leave you with that phone before we leave. Anthony Scaramucci from Skybridge. Thank you so much. Good to be here, man. Thank you. That's it for this week's episode of Galaxy Brains. Thank you so much to our guest, Anthony Scaramucci from Skybridge Capital and our friend Bim Netabibi from Galaxy Trading. Everyone have a safe and happy weekend and we will see you next week.
48:25Alex Thorn:Thanks for listening to Galaxy Brains, the weekly podcast from Galaxy Research. If you enjoy the show, please like, rate, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. To follow Galaxy Research, sign up for our weekly newsletter at gdr.email, read our content at galaxy.com slash research, and follow us on Twitter at glxyresearch. See you next week.
From the publisher
Alex Thorn talks with Anthony Scaramucci, Founder of SkyBridge Capital and the SALT Conference, about the structural challenges facing the U.S. economy and how Bitcoin and digital assets could help address them. They discuss Scaramucci’s perspective on fiscal policy, inequality, and American competitiveness, as well as his experience in the Trump White House, his relationship with Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), and his time on the television show Special Forces.
Plus, Beimnet Abebe (Galaxy Trading) joins to analyze the Federal Reserve’s current stance, inflation trends, and whether markets are entering a fragile moment.
This episode was recorded on Wednesday, October 29, 2025.
Participants, along with Galaxy Digital, hold a financial interest in Bitcoin. Galaxy Digital regularly engages in buying and selling Bitcoin, including hedging transactions, for its own proprietary accounts and on behalf of its counterparties. Galaxy Digital also provides services to vehicles that invest in Bitcoin. If the value of such assets increases, those vehicles may benefit, and Galaxy Digital’s service fees may increase accordingly.
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Follow us on Twitter, @glxyresearch, and read our research at www.galaxy.com/research/ to learn more! This podcast, and the information contained herein, has been provided to you by Galaxy Digital Holdings LP and its affiliates (“Galaxy Digital”) solely for informational purposes. View the full disclaimer at www.galaxy.com/disclaimer-galaxy-brains-podcast/