Anthony Scaramucci, financier and former White House communications director for Donald Trump, says he was once a “self-avowed crypto sceptic”.
He rejected the advice of US computer scientist Hal Finney (the recipient of the first Bitcoin) in 2012 when the cryptocurrency stood at $60 and eschewed investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (known for their part in the creation of Facebook) in 2014, passing on the online currency again.
“I didn’t understand it, so I passed on it,” he said. “It took me seven years to come around”.
It was a chance meeting with two Federal Reserve agents during his short time at the White House – where he served as communications director from 21 to 31 July 2017 – that convinced him to reconsider his stance.
“It was in the White House in 2017. This happened on a Wednesday, and the reason I know that is I was only there for one Wednesday. I was sitting in the Roosevelt Room with [then secretary to the Treasury] Steven Mnuchin and these two Fed guys walk in and they want to talk about the digitisation of the US dollar,” he said.
“I looked at the two of them and said: ‘So like over the blockchain, like Bitcoin?’ They looked at me and said: ‘Yes.’ It was then I said to myself: “Okay, I've got to force myself out of my comfort zone and I've got to really get up to speed on Bitcoin.’”
His belief in the currency stems from its potential in the future, with The Rest is Politics: US podcast host stating that Bitcoin is a “hard asset” that will be used by future generations as “digital gold”.
He is far from alone. While some, such as Warren Buffett and his former business partner Charlie Munger (who died in 2023), have firmly rejected the cryptocurrency, billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones now owns Bitcoin having once been a denier, Scaramucci said.
Similarly, BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink “was very negative in 2021” but his firm now houses the largest Bitcoin ETF [exchange-traded fund] in the world, around $68bn invested in it.
Scaramucci named others, including US hedge fund founder and his former mentor Ray Dalio and American investor Stanley Druckenmiller, as all converting to Bitcoin in recent years.
The thing they all have in common, he noted, was that they all “did their homework”.
“I would say 90 people out of 100 end up owning Bitcoin if they actually do the homework. If you actually took 10 hours of your life to understand the properties of the blockchain and what Bitcoin represents to a future generation of people that are going to be in asset management, I think you'll respect that that group of people are going to see this as a store of value as it gets adopted,” said Scaramucci.
“I understand it's a difficult asset for people to get their arms around. But I think once you get there and go down that rabbit hole, you end up being a Bitcoin holder.”
So is it worth buying now?
Following his interaction with Federal Reserve representatives, Scaramucci bought the webpage SkybridgeBitcoin.com soon after he left the White House. However, it was still another three years before he finally made his first purchase.
Five years ago, Bitcoin was worth around £17,629.38. Today, however, it is almost four times higher at £65,296.99. Yet it is down 12.6% in sterling terms this year and around half this when compared with the dollar.
Scaramucci, sometimes known as Mooch, said this was normal for the asset, which has proven to be volatile. He noted that some early adopters had sold out to realise gains in 2025, but said investors should not be put off.
“That's very typical of what happens. Think about it from a venture capital perspective. Google gets started in a garage, it's supplied with venture capital in Silicon Valley. It then is taken public by an investment bank and has a circulation of public institutional investors and public retail investors. And so I would draw that analogy to Bitcoin,” he said.
Bitcoin is still in its early adoption phase, the financier suggested, comparing the number of people using it to the number of internet users in the late 1990s. As such, people should expect lots of volatility as it continues to be adopted.
However, those who stay the course will be rewarded, he said, referencing the initial public offering of Amazon in May 1997.
“Unfortunately I didn't buy it, but if you bought $10,000 worth of it and you were able to stomach and suffer through nine times where Amazon lost 50% of its value and one time where it lost 90% of its value, [the investment would be worth] about $36m,” he said.
“The only persons that owned Amazon for that entire period of time, believe it or not, were Jeff Bezos and his family and his trust – everyone else sort of circulated out of Amazon. So I see [price swings] more as circulation and common volatility with something like Bitcoin.”
As such, he is “still buying Bitcoin at these levels”, including purchasing four Bitcoins for his family trust earlier this month as the cryptocurrency sold off.