The New York Post wrote Anthony Scaramucci's "financial obituary" in July 2022, with a cartoon image of him on a sinking rowboat laden with bitcoin, but the entrepreneur tells Crystal he's not dead.

What he's saying: "This is the most successful year of my career," Scaramucci says, with his core fund in SkyBridge up 25% as of Dec. 15, which he attributes to his decision to reinvent the investment firm and move into digital assets (it began investing in bitcoin in late 2020).

• "We bought the bottom in things like SOL, ether and bitcoin," he says.

Reality check: This year's performance follows a more humbling 2022, when crypto was a drag on the firm's biggest fund, and assets under management dwindled.

• The firm declined to say where performance stood since its pivot, citing compliance issues around parsing specific intervals.

Looking to 2024, however, Scaramucci is sanguine.

• "The big Kahuna is the bitcoin ETF gets approved, and I predict it will be the big driver of interest," he says. There'll be an educational story being told by the largest institutions in the world to other very large institutions."
• There's also the Fed: "We've just experienced arguably one of the most aggressive interest rate cycles in U.S. central banking history. With the Fed indicating more or less that it's ending — that's another big positive."

Zoom out: "We believe bitcoin is a store of value, not a global reserve currency. Not going to buy a latte with it. But the immutability of bitcoin fits with the historical narrative around things like gold," he said.

• When asked for a price target, he cited his last wrong one: $100,000 by the end of 2021.
• "Don't know why it can't be $100K in 18 months. Imagine a stock going from $42 to $100. Can it be done — yes."

By the numbers: That would be a 135% jump from recent prices.

State of play: Scaramucci says SkyBridge has not yet bought back the 30% stake sold to FTX for $45 million in September 2022, due to "an unfortunate process of bankruptcy."

• "We lost a lot of money on that transaction, and I would imagine that we'll get our shares back without a lot of consequence or drama," he said.
• The deal had included a $10 million purchase of FTT, a Samcoin.

What we're watching: Scaramucci is gearing up for an exclusive crypto event to rival the U.S. central bank's annual gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. (Read more below.)

Scaramucci is providing a little competition for the Fed come August when he kicks off the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium, Crystal writes.

Save the date: Aug. 19-22, 2024.

• Skybridge's SALT is partnering with Kraken, one of the oldest crypto exchanges, for a "decentralized banking" conference — set to occur at the same time as that other gathering.

Why it matters: The Federal Reserve's annual Jackson Hole symposium, which will be running just an hour's drive north, is an important one for crypto and beyond, given the central bank's policy pivot.

What they're saying: "Did you think Crypto Bahamas was our last gig?" Scaramucci says with a laugh. "Just remember this: We're like the Rolling Stones — we had to keep rolling to stay alive."

• Scaramucci remembers the last SALT event for whom it gathered: Prime Minister Tony Blair, former President Bill Clinton, but also Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, Katy Perry, and a "cavalcade of hedge fund managers." (Anyone who attended the SBF trial likely remembers the reference.)
• "Unfortunately, we teamed up with Sam Bankman-Fried and, obviously, he turned out to be a criminal," Scaramucci said.
• "Good news for me, I didn't do anything wrong — and I always tell my kids this: If you have high integrity, there's always opportunity."

Details: Some 300-odd people, mostly from the C-suite, are invited to the event. (Yes, yes, Axios is invited too.)

• Some will be in crypto and others, crypto curious.
• "There'll be CEOs that I'm friends with, sports commissioners, people who may not be in bitcoin, but want to learn about it, and corporation CEOs, you know because they just changed the accounting rules."
• "We've talked to Sen. [Cynthia] Lummis, the governor and we're going to showcase the libertarianism of Wyoming!"

Of note: "[The Fed conference] is a little dowdy, if we're gonna be honest," Scaramucci says. "White sheets and white robes at the Four Seasons. That's my kind of camping."

💭 Crystal's thought bubble: The classic crypto line — have fun staying poor — comes to mind.

Traders diving back into crypto will be gladder if they look before they leap, Crystal writes.

What they're saying: Bitcoin, ether, and altcoin prices have returned to pre-FTX levels, but spot market depth on centralized exchanges show the "Alameda gap," Kaiko senior research analyst Desi Ianeva tells Axios.

• "The rally just started, so it may take some time for market depth to fully recover," she said.

Why it matters: Market depth measures the ability of a market to absorb a large order without moving the price, so the more volume there is, the better for traders.

• Yes, but: Spot market depth hasn't returned to pre-FTX levels, but the crypto derivatives market has, market experts tell Axios.

What others are saying: "When it comes to derivatives — CME options and perps — where most of the liquidity traditionally was, liquidity is back to pre-FTX levels," Evgeny Gaevoy, founder and CEO of Wintermute said, adding, "Not back to pre-Terra levels."

• Beimnet Abebe, director of principal trading at Galaxy Digital, echoed Gaevoy and added: "The most important thing to focus on is spot's improved liquidity all before bitcoin ETFs launching." (By Kaiko's measure, market depth is up 17% YTD.)
• Abebe said the market was "underestimating" what the arrival of those investment vehicles could do to the overall complex.

What we're watching: The launch of 13-odd spot bitcoin ETFs should introduce more liquidity in spot that will trickle down to centralized exchanges one way or another, Gaevoy said, adding that he expects traditional market venues like the CME to see improved bitcoin liquidity in particular.

• Market experts also said that market depth in derivatives was a "leading indicator" for improving spot market depth because that market, even in traditional assets like stocks, is several times bigger.

The bottom line: Are we back? "Unequivocally so," Abebe said

• "We are almost back," Gaevoy said. "Signs have changed to the positive."

Editor's note: This item has been updated to correct the name of Galaxy Digital.

🗿 BlackRock revised its bitcoin ETF proposal to conform to the SEC's very weird preferences. (CoinDesk)

🫡 Zooko, the person most associated with privacy coin Zcash, and leader of the Electric Coin Company, is stepping down. (Electric Coin Co.)

🕹️ Triple-A publisher Ubisoft had a successful "Champions Tactics" NFT sale. (Decrypt)

🦍 Coordinape, an HR app for DAOs, has launched CoLinks, its answer to LinkedIn. (The Defiant)

I've been remiss in addressing a key Wall Street Journal correction on cryptocurrency this year, but Sen. Elizabeth Warren just made it newsy again, Brady writes.

Driving the news: The former presidential candidate from Massachusetts sent a letter to the Blockchain Association this week accusing the trade organization of undermining congressional efforts to curb the use of digital assets to finance Hamas, which launched an offensive against Israel this year.

• Specifically, she accuses them of hiring former government officials to undermine congressional legislation that would limit the use of blockchain technology.

Yes, but: The narrative of crypto as an important source of financing for Hamas began with an Oct. 10 story from the Wall Street Journal.

• It has since been corrected to note, among other things, "An earlier version of this article incorrectly said PIJ [Palesitine Islamic Jihad] had sent more than $12 million in crypto to Hezbollah since 2021."
• However, Warren links instead to a later WSJ story, from Nov. 12, which begins with the early days of terrorist groups' exploration of cryptocurrency and turns to intelligence officials who say they still believe that such organizations still heavily use cryptocurrency, though they pivoted from Bitcoin to Tron, to get access to the stablecoin tether.

Be smart: Both stories confuse readers by citing large numbers of crypto flows into local financial networks, some of which might have then flowed on to terrorist organizations.

• It's like saying that billions of dollars flowed into a megabank, which has been found to have some accounts linked to the mob. It is likely that only a tiny portion of the flows ended up with gangsters.