FTX Ventures, the investment arm of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX digital asset exchange, intends to buy a stake 30% in SkyBridge Capital, the fund headed by Donald Trump’s short-lived White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci.
The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed but according to the Financial Times, SkyBridge Capital said it would use US$40mln of the proceeds to buy cryptocurrencies as a long-term investment.
Of Bankman-Fried, Scaramucci told Bloomberg in June: “Sam Bankman-Fried is the new John Pierpont Morgan — he is bailing out cryptocurrency markets the way the original J P Morgan did after the crisis of 1907.”
And right he is; through his two companies FTX and Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried has offered to bailout a plethora of struggling crypto businesses following the US$2tn market crash this year.
FTX suggested in August that US$70mln in bailout money directed at insolvent crypto lender Voyager was money “down the drain,” though the US$680mln line of credit to BlockFi has been smoother.
Scaramucci’s 10-day stint at Trump’s comms director was a whirlwind of off-the-cuff remarks and bizarre media appearances.
He was fired less than two weeks into the job following a string of profanity-laced tirades against colleagues including Trump’s former right-hand-man Steve Bannon.
The ‘Mooch’ has since been a vocal critic of Donald Trump and backed Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race.
Apart from his short political side quest, The Mooch has a three-decade career in investment banking, where he started out at Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) before co-launching Oscar Capital Management in 1996.
Scaramucci subsequently established SkyBridge Capital in 2005.