SkyBridge, Al Maskari Holding partners with blockchain firm Casper Labs
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SkyBridge Capital, the global investment firm led by Anthony Scaramucci and the Al Maskari family’s holding company, said it will provide strategic support — including business development, investor relations and marketing services — to Casper Labs, a blockchain software company focused on businesses and governments.
SkyBridge Capital, which had ties to now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, is buying warrants to become a shareholder in Casper Labs, whose native CSPR token has fallen to 4 cents from May 2021’s all-time high of $1.33.
“Casper is quite unique, because they offer a decentralized model for enterprise software,” Scaramucci told CoinDesk in an interview. “We believe that it is not just for financial services, but can be used across the whole spectrum, including cloud computing.”
Casper Labs is adding major partners during a particularly tough crypto winter, where venture capital and other investments in the industry fell 91% year-over-year in January, even as support for infrastructure projects remained relatively strong.
Enterprise-grade technology
Casper Labs built a layer 1 blockchain that is intended to scale to meet the operational needs of businesses and governments, providing transaction transparency that can help increase revenue at a relatively low cost.
“Every design decision we’ve made is for enterprise and government use,” co-founder and CEO Mrinal Manohar told CoinDesk. “If you think about most blockchains, the way they’re built is almost to create a shadow economy in the sense that if an enterprise or a government wanted to use that technology, it would require almost a complete demolition of their existing technological infrastructure. . “
Manohar said Casper’s blockchain can work with a company’s existing technology stack. He also noted that Casper Labs also offers upgradable smart contracts, giving customers the ability to iron out mistakes and make changes for the future.
Casper Labs is no stranger to headline-grabbing partnerships, and is fresh off an announcement with Google Cloud. The new partnerships provide useful connections, and Manohar notes that Scaramucci “has one of the most impressive Rolodexes out there.” The Al Maskari family has a deep network of contacts in the United Arab Emirates, a region that became bullish on blockchain technology quite early on.
“If we get this right, people will start adapting this protocol — it will become an industry standard,” Scaramucci said.
Construction during the crypto winter
SkyBridge continues to make investments in crypto technologies despite being hit by a market downturn and the FTX collapse. The crypto exchange took a 30% stake in SkyBridge months before FTX’s liquidity problem was revealed in a CoinDesk report and the exchange filed for bankruptcy. Scaramucci told CNBC earlier this year that SkyBridge may buy back FTX’s stake this year.
SkyBridge is starting to show signs of recovery, Scaramucci told CoinDesk, noting that the Opportunity Zone REIT fund has climbed more than 38% this year, and its core Multi-Adviser Hedge Fund Portfolio is up 6%.
“We made a significant pivot in 2020. There’s some irony there because we looked like absolute geniuses at the end of 2021. And that was applauded by customers, thanking us for pulling them into the future,” Scaramucci said. “And then, of course, towards the end of 2022, we were hit by the same customers telling us, ‘Oh my God, you guys don’t know what you’re doing.'”
“Neither of those things are true. We’re not the geniuses we looked like in 2021, and we’re not the douchebags we looked like at the end of 2022. I think it’s somewhere in the middle.”
Read more: Casper Labs focuses on Enterprise
UPDATE (March 2, 2023 13:46 UTC): Adds clarifying details in the seventh paragraph that Casper’s blockchain works with a company’s existing technology stack.
