SkyBridge Capital Founder to FTX’s Former CEO: ‘Tell The Truth’

Former White House Director of Communications Anthony Scaramucci, who is the founder and managing partner of global alternative investment firm SkyBridge Capital, has called upon Sam Bankman-Fried (“SBF”) to tell the truth about the collapse of FTX.

SkyBridge Capital is “an SEC-registered investment adviser and global alternative investment manager that invests in hedge funds, digital assets, private equity, and real estate.”

On 4 January 2021, Skybridge announced “the launch of the SkyBridge Bitcoin Fund LP, which provides mass-affluent investors with an institutional-grade vehicle to gain exposure to Bitcoin.”

The press release went on to say:

“Additionally, on behalf of its flagship funds, SkyBridge initiated a position, valued at approximately $310 million at the time of this release, in funds investing in Bitcoin during November and December 2020.“

According to a report by Cointelegraph published on 25 April 2022, SkyBridge Capital “also has money deployed in other hedge funds, late-stage private tech companies and real estate.” Furthermore, SkyBridge has been trying to get a physical Bitcoin ETF approved by the U.S. SEC.

Speaking in a recent interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box, Scaramucci implored the former FTX CEO, who stepped down on the same day the exchange filed for bankruptcy, to explain what led to the company’s high-profile collapse. 

Scaramucci revealed that he made a visit to SBF in the Bahamas last week “in the spirit of helping.” Scaramucci originally thought the situation was salvageable, and noted that helping FTX would “obviously help the entire [crypto] industry.”

As reported by The Daily Hodl, Skybridge Capital’s CEO said:

And then when I got to the Bahamas, it became clear, at least from some of the people that worked on the legal and compliance team, that perhaps there was more going on than it being a rescue situation. So when I left the Bahamas in the afternoon, I was actually distressed.

Scaramucci hesitated to call FTX’s situation fraud, noting the legal connotations associated with the term and the presumption of innocence owed to those involved. However, he claimed to be “distressed” about the series of events that unfolded and implored SBF to make the truth of the exchange’s bankruptcy open to the public: 

I would implore Sam and his family… to tell the truth to their investors, get to the bottom of it, stop 22 tweets, but get themselves in front of a regulator and explain exactly what happened. 

Scaramucci said it was his intention to purchase back equity from his company that he sold to FTX Ventures earlier in the year. He also lamented the trust he and other venture capitalists had placed in SBF, in addition to the “people around the world” who trusted the FTX brand and technology.