THEY FINALLY ‘BIT’
Wall Street’s SALT confab high on crypto
If you’re looking for proof that cryptocurrencies are no longer just for basement day traders, look no further than this year’s SALT conference.
The annual gathering of Wall Street titans organized by SkyBridge Capital — whose founder is the Trump administration’s short-lived communications chief, Anthony “Mooch” Scaramucci — went crypto crazy as a surprisingly large crowd flocked to the Javits Center in Midtown this week.
Mets owner Steve Cohen, founder of the $22 billion New York hedge fund Point72 Asset Management, told attendees that he had finally seen the light on crypto, adding that he had been a “skeptic” until his son persuaded him to invest.
“I saw crypto as speculative,” Cohen said at the conference. “My son convinced me to get involved in the space. This could be a space like the Internet, and I decided I wasn’t going to miss this.”
Cohen is investing in a new cryptocurrency-trading firm called Radkl, The Wall Street Journal reported this week. Last month, Point72 made its first crypto investment, in data-analytics provider Messari.
“The hedge-fund business today is mature,” Cohen said. “You have to grind out a living — it doesn’t have the same excitement and hope that technology and new industries have.”
Indeed, nearly a dozen of the more than 50 panels at the SkyBridge Alternatives conference focused on the buzzy asset class. Sessions included “How Crypto Changes Everything” and “The Macro Case for Bitcoin.”
Bitcoin has soared by more than 7,700 percent over the last five years versus the US dollar, according to data from Coinbase, which operates a cryptocurrency exchange. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 92 percent over the same time period.
Still, not all big names in finance were so sanguine on the newfangled currency, which Warren Buffett, for one, has called “disgusting” and not a store of value.
Ray Dalio, founder of the $145 billion hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, warned at the conference of a crackdown on crypto. If crypto is “really successful,” he said, regulators will “kill it.”
And for every Cathie Wood — the ARK Invest chief who predicted on Monday at SALT that Bitcoin would hit $500,000 from its current price of around $47,650 — there’s a notable bear.
Last month, hedge-fund manager John Paulson, who made $20 billion foreseeing the 2008 downfall of the US housing market, predicted cryptocurrencies would “go to zero.”
Still, Dalio said that crypto was good for diversifying a portfolio and that he owns more crypto than gold.
SkyBridge Chief Investment Officer Ray Nolte revealed at the conference that 12 percent of the firm’s $7 billion in holdings are in Bitcoin.
Meanwhile, top financial regulators have indicated they are looking to crack down on the space.
In Senate testimony on Tuesday, Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler said, “It’s more like the Wild West or the old world of ‘buyer beware.’ ” And in a speech at the Aspen Security Forum last month, Gensler said crypto is “rife with fraud.”
This could be a space like the Internet and I decided I wasn’t going to miss this. — Steve Cohen