Bitcoin (BTC) has two new – and high-profile – fans from the world of traditional American finance, with George Soros and the “hedge fund king” Steve Cohen both reportedly going crypto.
Both have hinted before that they could branch out into crypto, but their latest moves are more bullish than ever. Per The Street, Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management is now looking to appoint hire a head of cryptocurrencies, while Soros’ family office has started trading BTC, according to “two people familiar with the matter.”
The media outlet claimed the sources had confirmed that Dawn Fitzpatrick, the chief investment officer at Soros Fund Management, has “in recent weeks” given “the internal green light to actively trade bitcoin” and perhaps “other [unspecified] cryptocurrencies.”
Bloomberg claimed that “spokespeople for the firms” had “declined to comment” on the reported developments, but added that it had seen a letter from Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management to investors in May that explained:
“We are exploring opportunities around blockchain technology and its transformative and disruptive capabilities.”
The media outlet also quoted the firm as claiming it would “be remiss to ignore a now USD 2 trillion cryptocurrency market.”
Soros’ own crypto-curious attitude can be traced back several years. Although he once dismissed crypto markets as a “bubble,” back in 2018, his fund bought an undisclosed amount of shares in Overstock, the crypto-keen e-commerce outlet that has been accepting bitcoin pay since 2014.
Cohen, the majority owner of the New York Mets MLB franchise, was named on the Institutional Investor top 20 rich list last year, with the media outlet estimating his earnings for last year at USD 1.7bn – despite a run-in with retail GameStop stock buyers that forced him off Twitter for around a month.
Fitzpatrick, meanwhile, has previously expressed a willingness to trade crypto, but previous efforts have come to naught. In 2018, she had briefed her firm’s macro-investing chief Adam Fisher to enter the crypto markets, but the latter left Soros’ firm in early 2019.
This year, she has been making more bullish statements, calling BTC “interesting” and “no longer a fringe asset,” talking about the firm’s recent investment in “exchanges, asset managers and custodians.”
During a Bloomberg interview in March, she explained that there was “a real fear of debasing fiat currencies,” a factor that was driving up public demand for crypto.
She added that BTC was a “commodity,” not a “currency,” but refused to disclose whether she had any personal bitcoin holdings.
At 07:58 UTC, BTC trades at USD 33,558 and is down by 5% in a day, almost erasing its all weekly gains.
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