MW Anthony Scaramucci was a hot Wall Street manager last year thanks to crypto. Now he sees bitcoin hitting $200,000 - this year.

By Barbara Kollmeyer

The manager says Trump's meme coin has helped slow positive crypto regulation

Anthony Scaramucci, who runs one of Wall Street's hottest crypto exchange-traded funds, has predicted bitcoin will hit $200,000 in 2025 with a U.S. reserve for the crypto also in the cards.

That's according to excerpts of an interview he gave to Saxo Bank, where he discussed his views on the sector. His First Trust SkyBridge Crypto Industry & Digital Economy ETF CRPT returned 74% in 2024, according to MarketWatch data, and by some accounts was the best-performing ETF last year.

The former communications director during President Trump's first term credited that 2024 performance to owning "components of the digital ecosystems" such as MicroStrategy Inc. $(MSTR)$ or Coinbase Global Inc. $(COIN)$.

He said his firm came up with a list of 20 stocks, which "did well and then it crashed" in 2021 along with bitcoin (BTCUSD). "But if you were like us, we were buying it at $3 or $4 a share and now it's back up to $18. This year, there's probably a $35-36 price target for that ETF," Scaramucci said.

The founder of the alternative-investment firm Skybridge believes bitcoin will become a $200,000 asset in 2025, "a 100% return from where we are right now," putting it at a $4 trillion market cap. But for bitcoin "to truly be an asset class, it would have to trade into the $15-$20 trillion zone," and he also believes that's the case.

As for his current crypto recommendations, Scaramucci has a "nine-figure position," in Solana (SOLUSD), and sees that and bitcoin itself as core assets. He also owns some Avalanche (AVAXUSD) and Polkadot (DOTUSD) for the longer term, and away from that, has "big positions" in AI companies including Nvidia Corp. $(NVDA)$, even if "some people think they're bubbles."

He sees AI as "revolutionary stuff" that reminds him of Web1, the early days of the internet, and while the ensuing crash was painful for some, those who held on got very wealthy. "And I think we're in the same situation today as we were with Web1 and with these two asset classes, crypto and AI."

He also commented on Trump's vow to build a strategic bitcoin reserve in the U.S. during his campaign - the president signed an executive order last month to set up a working group and help propose a federal regulatory framework. Scaramucci said it's "workable ... and will happen," but that Trump first needs to get bipartisan commitment to a reserve. By the end of the year, he expects there will be a "framework for it."

"Will they buy 50,000 bitcoins? Will they buy 100,000? Will they buy the BlackRock ETF? They're going to do something, in this category, And so I think it's very clear to the rest of the world that the Americans are going to do something which is why the rest of the world lots of these sovereigns are already getting in place. It's sort of like a Nash game theory. If you're doing it, I've got to do it. And I think you'll see people doing it. And this is another reason why I think bitcoin is going to go higher this year," he said.

When asked why he thought Trump launched a memecoin, Scaramucci responded: "Because he's a grifter, is the answer ... I would like to buy his World Liberty coin and I'd like to buy his Truth Social - and shut all three of those things down because it's a national embarrassment."

He said Trump's actions have "slowed down positive crypto regulation and he's proliferated. The meme coins are going into the stratosphere, meaning there are hundreds of them. So that's a disaster and he's a grifter."

Read: Should you give up on ether, XRP and dogecoin as bitcoin continues to dominate the crypto market?

-Barbara Kollmeyer

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February 18, 2025 09:00 ET (14:00 GMT)

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