Skybridge Capital CEO Anthony Scaramucci believes that while Bitcoin (BTC) remains an attractive asset, it has not reached the “wallet bandwidth” required to be seen as an inflation hedge.
He speaks on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Mondays. The CEO of Global Investment Management said that Bitcoin is still a lot of an “early adopter tech asset” that needs to be held in about a billion wallets before it can begin serving as an inflation hedge:
“Until it hits the billion or billion mark, I don’t think you will see Bitcoin as an inflation [hedge] because it is still an early adopter tech asset.”
While the exact number of Bitcoin wallets in the world is unknown, estimates put this number at around 200 million.
In its earlier years, some described Bitcoin as a potential inflation hedge, given its steady supply of 21 million coins. However, this narrative has changed over time, as it has been observed that Bitcoin is increasingly linked to the stock market, according to a new report by the International Monetary Fund.
Scaramucci said he remains bullish on Bitcoin and the overall crypto market, pointing to recent moves by BlackRock to launch a new private Bitcoin trust with Coinbase as the custodian — a sign of strong institutional demand for the leading cryptocurrency.
Scaramucci believes that the markets are currently filled with a large number of short trades, which could lead to “stealing their faces when they least expect it.”
In a recent interview with Cointelegraph, Stephen Lubka, Managing Director of Private Clients at Swan Bitcoin, argued that Bitcoin should still be seen as an inflation hedge.
While Lubka agreed that Bitcoin failed to act as an inflationary hedge during global inflation events this year, he believed that this inflation was mostly caused by supply shocks rather than monetary expansion – Bitcoin is able to hedge against inflation more effectively.
Related: UK double-digit inflation for first time in 40 years
As of the time of writing, Bitcoin is currently trading at $21,406, down 69.01% from its all-time high of $69,045 on November 11 last year.
Also speaking on the Squawk Box on Monday, Coinshare Chief Strategy Officer Meltem Demirors said she expects bitcoin prices to remain flat throughout the third quarter as prices continue to correlate between tech stocks and cryptocurrencies.
