Sam Bankman-Fried spent $45 million last week to acquire a 30% interest in Anthony...

Sam Bankman-Fried spent $45 million last week to acquire a 30% interest in Anthony Scaramucci’s hedge company Skybridge Capital. The annual SALT conference in New York, which is the biggest event of the year for SkyBridge, was this week without Bankman-Fried.

In contrast, Bankman-Fried only appeared virtually, despite the fact that his cryptocurrency company FTX was the conference’s major sponsor this week. FTX and SkyBridge introduced FTX Bahamas, a cryptocurrency-only event, earlier this year.

The 30-year-old billionaire was a regular at SALT last year, pushing his bitcoin exchange FTX to hundreds of investors and media members. But this week, a source claims that Bankman-Fried was unable to travel from his home in the Bahamas.

One conference attendee commented, “It’s odd – if Bankman-Fried was at SALT, the deal would have been the news of the conference.” “You’d assume he’d show up to support and increase his investment.”

Despite his crypto-focused funds falling this year, Scaramucci, who famously served for just ten days as the former President Trump’s communications director, is still optimistic about cryptocurrencies.

While web3, and NFTs continued to be a topic of panel discussions, insiders noticed that SALT’s events this week at the Javits Center in New York were considerably less focused on cryptocurrency than they were last year. In fact, one person who helped people sign up told The Post that she had to reassure them that it wouldn’t be as crypto heavy as it was the previous year.

In a response to The Post, Scaramucci advised readers not to “overly read into” Bankman-absence Fried’s and noted that FTX was well-represented at the event with a large staff. Scaramucci continued, “I think the investment he just made is statement enough.

FTX opted not to respond.

One of SkyBridge’s funds with a strong focus on cryptocurrencies, Legion Strategies, is down almost 30% so far in 2018. According to a Bloomberg article, Skybridge was forced to halt withdrawals from the $230 million Legion Strategies fund in July. The investments related to cryptocurrencies make up more than 20% of the fund. The $2 billion SkyBridge flagship fund is expected to lose close to $900 million in withdrawals, according to a DealBook article from July. While the event this week attracted notable figures, such as Todd Boehly, the California billionaire who just acquired FS Chelsea, it missed many of the well-known hedge fund names for which the conference is often known.

Financial heavyweights including Steven Cohen of Point72, Dan Loeb of Third Point, Marc Lasry of Avenue, and Cathie Wood of ARK Invest were among the speakers from the previous year’s speaker lineup. Naturally, as market turbulence persists, many investors may be considerably more concerned with maintaining their funds than expressing their opinions about NFTs at conferences.

For the majority of investors, it’s not a good moment to be bragging about your performance, said one banker who decided to miss this year. Bankman-Fried, 30, has emerged as something of a crypto saviour after the severe decline in digital coinage. Forbes estimates his net worth at $12.4 billion. As the cryptocurrency market crashed over the summer, he invested $500 million to save crypto brokerage Voyager Digital and gave BlockFi, a crypto bank, a $250 million credit line.

Bankman-absence Fried’s was strange, but it only costs $45 million,” the conference attendee continued.

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