ReutersMar 25, 2021 00:15:54 AM
By Anna Irrera and Tom Wilson
LONDON (Reuters) – Bitcoin doesn’t have to be a widely used payment method to be successful and could only thrive as a store of value, SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci said on Wednesday.
Bitcoin was developed as a payment method and is still of little use for trading. In a key move, Tesla Inc said on Wednesday that customers can now pay for their electric vehicles in cryptocurrency.
“For Bitcoin to be successful, it doesn’t have to become a global currency,” Scaramucci said in an interview at Reuters Digital Assets Week 2021.
“It could just be a store of value and then transfer your bitcoin into the different currencies you want to transact in,” said the former White House communications director.
Earlier this year, ScarBrucci’s SkyBridge launched a bitcoin fund with $ 310 million in assets under management.
Bitcoin hit an all-time high of nearly $ 62,000 that month. This is the latest milestone in a meteoric rise fueled by major US investors.
Even so, Scaramucci, who was ousted by former US President Donald Trump in 2017 after a little over a week in office, said he was not a Bitcoin maximalist and was referring to die-hard supporters of the cryptocurrency.
“I don’t think Jesus and Moses got together and had a baby and the baby was bitcoin – that’s not me. I see the risks of bitcoin, it’s a volatile asset,” he said.
“I’m a bitcoin investor. I was once a bitcoin skeptic.”
DIGITAL DOLLAR?
The Trump administration had “broadly based and negatively” assessed Bitcoin because of its theoretical threat to the status of the dollar as a de facto global reserve currency, said Scaramucci.
“The idea that someone could displace the dollar would be painful for regulators,” he said.
Of course, Bitcoin still has a long way to go before it replaces the dollar.
Still, central banks around the world, including the US Federal Reserve, are trying to issue their own digital cash to partially counter the rise in public and privately held cryptocurrencies.
“There will be a digital dollar – the Treasury Department is obviously working on it,” said Scaramucci.
“The United States will not digitize the yuan without digitizing the dollar.”
US monetary and fiscal stimulus programs to combat the COVID-19 pandemic could also make Bitcoin an attractive hedge against the erosion of the dollar’s value, Scaramucci said.
This is also driving more investors into alternative assets like “non-fungible tokens” (NFTs), a technology that allows digital artwork or other content to be authenticated and sold in distributed ledgers, Scaramucci said.
His son, a videographer, created a work of art and sold it as the NFT for the Ethereum digital currency, he added.
“Old wisps of fog like me don’t know what (NFTs) are unless we talk to our 21-year-old kids,” he said. “The stuff is coming up. Don’t be an old fart and get up to speed as soon as possible.”
(Reporting by Tom Wilson and Anna Irrera. Editing by Mark Potter)
This story was not edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by automatic feed.
