Disgraced FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried “really hurt the industry in the United States from a regulatory perspective,” according to the venture investor and former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci.
“He embarrassed the politicians; he gave a lot of money to them. They spent a lot of time with him, Gary Gensler spent a lot of time with him. And then they had this huge situation that happened. And that was very embarrassing,” Scaramucci said during a panel discussion at the Collision 2023 conference in Toronto.
He added that as a result of the embarrassment for regulators and politicians, the crackdown on crypto from their side has been harsher than it would have otherwise been.
“And so now the pendulum has swung too far to over-regulation in this ridiculous prosecutorial oversight,” Scaramucci, who leads the venture fund Skybridge Capital, said.
Canada offers better regulations than the US
Asked about the differences between crypto regulations in Canada and the United States, Scaramucci said Canada is now doing things in the same way the US used to, which he pointed out is the right way to go about regulation.
“They went to the industry. They said, ‘Okay, how do we fairly regulate the industry? How do we protect ourselves from bad actors?’ Most of the industry players know one another, and then […] they work alongside their legislators to come up with guidelines,” he said.
He added that the crypto sector in Canada seems to “thrive,” while pointing to Binance CEO and Canadian national Changpeng Zhao (CZ) as a leader in the space that is worth keeping an eye on.
“I’m gonna give him an A on execution and growing Binance. It’s 65ish percent of the overall market. So I’ll give him an A on that,” Scaramucci said about CZ.
However, he also said that CZ could do better in terms of transparency, although he stressed no wrongdoing has been documented at Binance despite the lawsuit from the SEC.
“He probably gets a C+ or B on transparency around it. Maybe in the beginning, they had some things that they did there that were regrettable. But it’s just the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] that is suing them; we have yet to see anything criminal,” the well-known investor said.
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