Bitcoin's beatdown is a buying opportunity before the cryptocurrency makes a sustained turnaround to advance to $100,000 over the next 12-14 months, SkyBridge Capital CEO Anthony Scaramucci told CNBC on Monday.
He appeared as bitcoin during Monday's session sank 15% to $22,829.66 and fell below $23,000 for the first time since December 2020 as part of a wider selloff in the cryptocurrency market. The market's value on Monday fell below $1 trillion for the first time since early 2021.
"[With] incremental cash that comes into our funds, we have bought more bitcoin and ethereum. We have a private stake in FTX. FTX is doing very well, it's gaining market share and is a profitable company," he said, referring to the cryptocurrency exchange run by 30-year-old crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried.
"So, yes, I mean, the truth be told, people will look back on this [market] debacle and say, 'I wish I had fresh cash to buy into that.' Could it leg down some more? Certainly," he said.
Bitcoin has dropped about 50% during 2022 and ether, the token on the ethereum blockchain, has lost roughly 67% this year, including Monday's tumble of 17%. Crypto prices this year have largely taken their lead from stocks that have been knocked down by worries about higher interest rates, with the
Federal Reserve
responding to decades-high inflation.
It's "impossible" to project the lows for bitcoin and ethereum, said Scaramucci. "But if you were at [CoinDesk's conference] Consensus last week in Austin, and you saw all of the robust development that's going on in Web3 and you see the money that's being deployed, I think that the upside is enormous," he said. "I still believe that bitcoin can easily get to $100,000 a coin over the next 12 to 24 months, but you're gonna have to settle out where the markets are."
Scaramucci recalled investment banks shelving their cryptocurrency ideas in 2018. "Today, they're doing derivative trades and things like ethereum. I don't think there's any going back. Lots of good information out there, lots of positives as it relates to fundamentals. Just the price action is terrible right now."
Meanwhile, investors could see inflation data improving by the end of 2022 as the COVID pandemic subsides and as the supply chain becomes more connected, he said. US consumer price inflation in May rose to a fresh 41-year high of 8.6%.