It was reported that Anthony Scaramucci is investing in a company set up by Brett Harrison, who was the president of the former cryptocurrency exchange FTX US.
More Risk, More Reward
The company will be funded by Scaramucci’s own money, according to Bloomberg, as a show of support for Harrison. Scaramucci made this announcement in an email to Bloomberg.
In a report published last month by Bloomberg News, Harrison had been looking for investors to fund a crypto software company with a valuation of up to $100 million. Those familiar with the matter said at the time that the proposal was for crypto traders to use the software in order to create algorithms for their strategies as well as to access different types of crypto markets, both centralized and decentralized.
Scaramucci commented about the investment in a reply to a Twitter thread by Harrison about his experiences at FTX US:
“Brett was a great developer and deeply understood FTX’s product,” Bankman-Fried said in a comment to Bloomberg News about Harrison’s Twitter thread. “While I strongly disagree with much of what he said, I have no desire to get into a public argument with him, nor do I feel like it’s my place to litigate his job performance in public unless he were to authorize me to do so.”
It was announced by FTX Ventures, the venture capital unit of Sam Bankman-Fried’s now-imploded crypto empire, that it was acquiring a 30% stake in Scaramucci’s Skybridge Capital as well as expanding collaboration between the firms in venture and digital asset investing.
While FTX was going through bankruptcy, Scaramucci said SkyBridge would try to repurchase that stake back from the firm – and he later admitted that he had conducted some checks on Bankman-Fried before the deal, but that those checks were “insufficient.”
In September of this year, Harrison stepped down from FTX US after working there for about 17 months. In the past, he has worked with Bankman-Fried and Citadel Securities. He has also worked for Jane Street, a quantitative trading firm where he has worked with the team.
We can say that experienced players in the market are changing their minds when a well-known investor such as Scaramucci invests in something that has the name FTX on it, and that is a big sign of change.
Although FTX and SBF alone show some worrying signs, it is worth noting that the people who worked for these companies will still be reliable faces in the crypto market.
