(Bloomberg) -- Anthony Scaramucci advised the cryptocurrency community to support President Joe Biden over Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, despite the incumbent administration’s harsh stance toward the industry. 

The SkyBridge Capital founder and former Trump communications director said that while a Trump administration would be better for crypto regulation in the short term, “in the long term, he’s going to create havoc and unpredictability in the legal system.”

“I would rather take the regulatory fight with people like Elizabeth Warren and people like Gary Gensler over that macro fight,” Scaramucci told a digital-assets conference at Duke University on Thursday night, referring to the Democratic senator from Massachusetts and the chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. 

The crypto industry has scored enough victories in courts, he said, citing Grayscale Investments’ successful suit against the SEC in its efforts to offer a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. Scaramucci also predicted that Coinbase Global Inc. and its chief executive officer, Brian Armstrong, will eventually prevail in its legal battle with the SEC over whether it is operating an unregistered exchange for tokens that the regulator deemed to be securities. 

“The Coinbase case will be a very big, instrumental case. I predict we will win that case,” he said. “And by the way, we may lose it here. But Brian Armstrong will win it in the Supreme Court. You just look at the matrix of the Supreme Court, who’s on it, and I believe that we will get to a fair regulatory process for digital assets.”

Scaramucci rose to fame by starting the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference, or SALT, gathering for hedge funds. He later worked as former President Trump’s communications director for 11 days, before becoming a vocal Trump critic. He made a big foray into crypto, but suffered from a reputational hit because of his partnership with failed crypto exchange FTX’s former chief executive, Sam Bankman-Fried, who was convicted of fraud charges. 

Bitcoin Target

The hedge-fund manager reiterated that he believes Bitcoin will reach $170,000 a year-and-a-half after the next halving, which is a roughly once-in-four-years process that is set to occur in April. His forecast is based on historical patterns in Bitcoin’s price following previous halvings, which slow the supply of new tokens. 

Still, “the general hedge-fund crowd is reluctant to be in crypto,” though the approval of Bitcoin ETFs could make it easier for the asset class to fit into their portfolios, Scaramucci said in an interview with Bloomberg at the Duke conference. “But the general tokens, beyond Bitcoin, are probably too speculative for the hedge-fund industry.” 

©2024 Bloomberg L.P.