Believe it or not, George Soros is planning to invest in cryptocurrency.
Bloomberg reports that Adam Fisher, head of macro investing at Soros’ $26 billion New York-based Soros Fund Management, had become authorized to trade crypto within the past few months.
This is a complete about face from January’s World Economic Forum in Davos, where the billionaire was against cryptocurrencies, writing the class off as a “typical bubble” as well as denouncing Bitcoin as a currency. During his speech, he dismissed the digital asset class due to its high volatility — arguably the key reason why institutional investors such as Warren Buffett and JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon and most of the general public do not engage in cryptocurrency trades.
“A currency is supposed to be a stable store of value. And a currency that can fluctuate 25% in a day can’t be used, for instance, to pay wages because wages could drop 25% in a day,” he said.
However, hedge funds, asset management firms such as TOBAM, and Wall Street banks such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have expressed varying levels of interest in digital currencies.
Soros has not yet decided to pull the trigger, nor has he decided which digital asset or assets to bet on, or how much of an investment he will make. An example of the potential impact of Soros’ wager would be last year, when the billionaire’s hedge fund became the third-largest shareholder in Overstock.com, snatching an 8.99% stake in the online retailer.
Following a Q4 ICO partnership with tZero, Argon, and RenGen, Overstock shares bolted to an all-time high of $86.90 in January. After the recent sell-off, Overstock currently sits at $35.80.
The cryptocurrency world did not seem fazed by the news as crypto-leaders Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripple repeated recent trends of teasing a bull run over the weekend before dropping harshly on Monday. Should Soros take the plunge, it could not only potentially open the floodgates for institutional investors, but also reverse the 2018 crypto-correction.
Soros is not the only large-scale investor with crypto interests, as the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds have also reportedly begun to wade in the crypto waters. RT reported Monday that Rockefeller venture capital arm Venrock had signed a partnership with cryptocurrency investment fund Coinfund, while the Rothschilds had invested in Bitcoin for the first time in December via the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.
Tags: Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, George Soros