Skybridge Capital co-founder Anthony Scarmucci believes that new Bitcoin participants are still in the early stages, and institutional adoption of the asset is only just gaining momentum.
In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, the investor said that institutional adoption is “happening now,” and he expects that more pension funds will soon reveal that they have allocations in BTC.
“Bitcoin has now received regulatory approval – for many large institutions this was a rate-limiting step,” Scaramucci explained. “Just remember that if you’re not long Bitcoin, you’re probably short Bitcoin.”
As of May 15, nearly 1,000 large investors with more than $100 million in assets had disclosed that they held at least one U.S. Bitcoin ETF in their securities portfolios. One of those investors was the State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB), which this week disclosed a $162 million allocation to ETFs.
According to Scaramucci, institutions are dipping their toes into BTC before it becomes part of a “total tactical asset allocation index.” Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan endorsed this view on Tuesday, predicting that institutions may start allocating 1% to 5% of their portfolios to BTC, pre-exposing client funds to the asset.
How high can bitcoin rise?
Asked why Bitcoin would gain such widespread use, Scaramucci replied that it belongs to the “digital gold category ” – a subset of investors who see the asset’s main use case as a carrier of value rather than a medium of exchange. MicroStrategy’s executive chairman, Michael Saylor, belongs to this camp, previously calling Bitcoin’s use case as a currency a “distraction.”
“Sometimes when you’re early, you get a lot of bumps and scrapes, but I think it pays to be early in Bitcoin, and I think we’re still early,” he concluded. Earlier this year, Scaramucci predicted that Bitcoin could reach $170,000 per coin by the end of 2025 .
