NEW YORK: Anthony Scaramucci says he is investing in a company set up by Brett Harrison, the former president of defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX US.
Scaramucci will be using his own money for the venture to show support for Harrison, he said in an email.
Harrison had been seeking funding for a crypto software company at a valuation of up to US$100mil (RM433mil), Bloomberg News reported last month.
The proposed idea was for software that crypto traders could use to write algorithms for their strategies and to access different types of crypto markets, both centralised and decentralised, two people familiar with the matter said at the time.
“Scaramucci has been a true mentor and friend to me since I joined the crypto industry two years ago,” Harrison said in a reply to questions by Bloomberg News.
“I’m honoured to have him as an investment partner, and know his guidance will be invaluable as I begin this new chapter.”
FTX Ventures, the venture capital unit of Sam Bankman-Fried’s now-imploded crypto empire, announced in September it took a 30% stake in Scaramucci’s Skybridge Capital and that the firms would expand their collaboration on venture and digital asset investing.
Amid FTX’s descent into bankruptcy, Scaramucci said SkyBridge would work to repurchase that stake.
Later he said that he’d done some checks on Bankman-Fried before the deal but that it was “not enough”.
Harrison worked at FTX US for about 17 months, stepping down in September.
Prior to that, he had been at Citadel Securities and quantitative trading firm Jane Street, where he had worked with Bankman-Fried.
A spokesman for Bankman-Fried declined to comment on a Twitter thread by Harrison about his experiences at FTX US, and which elicited comment from Scaramucci about the investment.
The spokesman also didn’t immediately reply to a follow-up question about the investment itself. — Bloomberg
