A look at Anthony Scaramucci's SkyBridge, which went from $9.2B assets in 2015 to $1.8B in 2022, and the FTX deal for a 30% stake in SkyBridge in September 2022
and snowballed beginning in 2018 after Scaramucci, back from Washington, hired a friend from Harvard Law School who's been behind the money-losing push into crypto. https://www.bloomberg.com/... @profileread : “I'm like a f—ing cockroach. If you think I'm going down after the nuclear bomb goes off, you've mis-sized me. I'm a little tough son of a bitch, and so I will find a way hook or crook to make this work for the firm.” https://www.bloomberg.com/... Anthony DeRosa / @anthony : Scaramucci replied: “I do think I am a psychopath in the sense that I don't really fear too many things. My attitude is we are here visiting the planet.” https://www.bloomberg.com/... @inartecarlodoss : Another ZIRPER fraud bites the dust https://twitter.com/... Sean Tuffy / @smtuffy : Great read on Mooch, SkyBridge, and the fallout from FTX https://www.bloomberg.com/... @parrotcapital : The Mooch is a shitcoiner. $FTT, $SRM, $SOL are in his bags. https://www.bloomberg.com/... Sean Tuffy / @smtuffy : ngmi https://twitter.com/... Tom Hearden / @followtheh : Quite a read. Bottom line Skybridge is toast. https://twitter.com/... Sean Tuffy / @smtuffy : The whole deal with SBF, as FTX was in death throes, is absolutely wild. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
SkyBridge is the cautionary ledger of the FTX fallout on the traditional-finance side: Anthony Scaramucci's fund-management business shrank from a peak of $9.2B in 2015 — wait, that link belongs elsewhere — from $9.2B in 2015 to $1.8B in 2022, with the decline snowballing after 2018 when Scaramucci hired a Harvard Law School friend who drove a money-losing push into crypto. The nadir came in September 2022, when FTX bought a 30% stake in SkyBridge just weeks before the exchange collapsed.
The profile lands inside the wider unwind of SBF's empire: regulators were already probing how customer funds moved through FTX.com and its affiliates (the SEC saw through SBF's 'carelessness' defense), and SBF had similarly parked $400M at obscure hedge fund Modulo shortly before the implosion. Scaramucci's own quote — 'I'm like a f—ing cockroach... I will find a way hook or crook to make this work for the firm' — frames a manager fighting for survival rather than exit.
First-order effects
- Scaramucci and SkyBridge's remaining investors are directly exposed: the fund held FTT, SRM, and SOL tokens that collapsed with the 'Samcoin' complex, while the 30% stake FTX bought in September 2022 is now worthless paper issued by a bankrupt counterparty.
- SkyBridge's $1.8B asset base means the firm must rebuild credibility with institutional allocators precisely when its most famous strategic partner is in Chapter 11.
Second-order effects
- The FTX estate's recovery machine turns the deal against SkyBridge itself — the estate has since sued Scaramucci among SBF's 'campaign of influence-buying' recipients to claw back the 2022 investments, so the stake that once signaled legitimacy becomes a litigation target.
- Other funds that took FTX or Alameda money face the same forced choice SkyBridge does: defend the investment as legitimate growth capital or negotiate a repayment, with every defensive statement feeding allocators' skepticism about crypto-tied managers.
Third-order effects
- If the clawback pattern holds across SBF's portfolio — SkyBridge's stake, the $400M parked at Modulo — bankruptcy recoveries will retroactively reprice the entire 2022 wave of crypto money buying credibility in traditional finance, converting prestige deals into legal liabilities.
- For hedge funds generally, the SkyBridge arc shows the structural risk of a late-cycle identity pivot: a seven-year asset decline compounded by one concentrated bet, suggesting allocators will demand separation between management brand and single-counterparty crypto exposure.
The trend: The 2022 vogue of crypto exchanges buying stakes in established finance firms is unwinding into a clawback era, where the FTX estate and its creditors treat influence purchases like SkyBridge's as recoverable losses rather than partnerships.