Wall Street soothsayers have dusted off crystal balls, stocked up on tea leaves, and gutted out intestines of small animals. Skybridge Capital’s Anthony Scaramucci, for instance, has a few choice predictions about Bitcoin and crypto.

Because he’s a positive fella and generally upbeat on the digital assets space, let’s comfort-feed our confirmation bias and start with him, then…

 

Anthony ‘Will You Do the Fandago?’ Scaramucci’s crypto outlook

Very likely influenced by the fact Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) have been in a general uptrend for roughly a month, Skybridge Capital founder and managing partner Scaramucci is seeing a few reasons for crypto-market optimism.

Speaking with CNBC this week, the former White House communications director (during part of the Trump admin) claimed that investor interest is there for crypto and that plenty of  new projects and innovations in the crypto space are making a difference.

He also pointed to “better than expected inflation data” speculating that a return to the kind of pre-pandemic, fourth-quarter 2019 economic conditions are something the US could “very well get back to” within about six to 12 months.

As far as the crypto market is concerned, Scaramucci believes “most of the leverage is now out of that system”, referring to the Terra LUNA-induced crypto contagion that has seen the likes of Celsius, Voyager, Three Arrows Capital and several more besides fall like dominoes resting on a house of cards on top of a deck chair. On the Titanic.

While he did say that it might be some time before the increased commercial flows in the crypto space would yield significant yields again, he believes crypto investors should “not pull out, fight their fear, stay patient and stay long term”.

And his reasons for optimism partly centre around positive sentiment for Ethereum’s “Merge” Proof-of-Stake upgrade; increasing adoption of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network payments system; and recent big moves from BlackRock into the crypto space, including its partnership with Coinbase.

Mid-longterm, Scaramucci said he believes that Bitcoin could hit as high as US$300k within six years, adding:

“There are a lot of short-term people [looking at crypto], a lot of research departments in different wirehouses that have knee-jerk reactions to things and get overly emotional… we’re trying to tell people to just relax, see through this… we see a pretty optimistic scenario for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Algorand over the next 12 to 24 months.”

 

Jamie ‘Bitcoin’s a Fraud’ Dimon sees a bad moon rising (possibly)

Meanwhile, the CEO of US/global financial giant JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon was instead focusing on the macroeconomic picture… which might be a little more in his lane, really. He’s well known in the crypto space, however, for his toxicity towards the industry, labelling Bitcoin a “fraud” back in 2017 and “worthless” in October last year. He also likes referencing 17th century tulip bulbs.

Dimon let his thoughts run free along a fence in a recent JP Morgan client call, as reported by Yahoo Finance, and it appears he doesn’t particularly share Scaramucci’s end-of-tunnel-lit vibes for the US economy, even if he does believe it is in decent shape at the moment.

“There are storm clouds,” Dimon said, citing interest rates, the US Fed’s quantitative tightening, oil, war in Ukraine and China-based economic concerns. He’s hardly the lone concerned ranger in that regard, of course.

“If I had to put odds: soft landing 10%. Harder landing, mild recession, 20%, 30%,” he predicted, adding: “Harder recession, 20%, 30%. And maybe something worse at 20% to 30%. It is a bad mistake to say ‘here is my single-point forecast’.”

Right, got it… so… pretty much a bet each way then and basically anything could happen. Think we preferred it when he was slamming Bitcoin.

 

‘Tired of crypto cowboy crap’: Kevin ‘Saudis are Coming’ O’Leary

Finally, tipping the scales a little unevenly, let’s circle back to another crypto bull (although a one-time sceptic) – Canadian investor and Shark Tank judge Kevin O’Leary.

Never mind the subhead quote there, we’ll put that in context in a sec. O’Leary has become a raging Bitcoin bull over the past year or so.

Speaking on YouTube identity Ran Nuener’s Crypto Banter channel a couple of days ago, O’Leary pointed to one of his favourite Bitcoin investment theses – sovereign wealth interest:

“When I talk to sovereign wealth, I don’t care if it’s Norway, or the UAE, or Saudi, they want Bitcoin,” he commented. “They want the proxy of Bitcoin, and they want that volatility.

“When you ask them if you could buy any digital asset, which one would it be and what allocation… It’s about 50 basis points on the low end up to 300 basis points on the high end. And 99% of the time they say Bitcoin.”

The Shark Tank star repeated his belief that these sovereign wealth funds are simply waiting for a clear regulatory framework before taking the plunge into Bitcoin, along with the likes of Ethereum, Solana and Polygon.

“If we had policy on Bitcoin, I swear to you the price will be $60,000 in two weeks,” he opined, also expressing he believes the controversial US government ban on Ethereum mixer protocol Tornado Cash was no bad thing.

The creator of Tornado Cash, Alexey Pertsev, was arrested by Dutch police in Amsterdam late last week. It has the crypto world divided, with many of the belief it’s a worrying development that signals a wider global crackdown on privacy.

For example, this, from lead developer of leading crypto “oracle” Chainlink, Patrick Collins…

And this, from co-founder of the DeFi protocol Gnosis, Stefan George…

But in the YouTube discussion, O’Leary said: “At the end of the day, it’s okay to arrest that guy. Why? He’s messing with the primal forces of regulation… If we have to sacrifice him, that’s okay, because we want to have some stability in that institutional capital.”

Then added:

“I’m tired of this crypto cowboy crap. I want to get involved in a regulated place where we can bring billions of dollars to work.”

 

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