While George Soros has compared Bitcoin to the Netherland’s mid-1600s ‘tulip mania’, the billionaire appears to have changed his mind in recent years. Today, Soros’ investment firm pulled a 180-degree turn, and even owns some of the flagship digital asset.
As is happens, in the summer of 2021, it became public record that Soros Fund Management received the greenlight from its CIO, Dawn Fitzpatrick, to trade “Bitcoin and perhaps other cryptocurrencies”, although Soros himself did not comment on the matter at the time. Notably, ‘trading’ and ‘investing’ in Bitcoin can mean two very different things. In particular, a trade can be a bet on either side of market, while investments tend to be associated with longer-term purchases with the expectation of increasing valuations.
Does Soros support crypto?
Soros’ interest in the widely diverse cryptocurrency space came to light in April 2021, when he joined a $200 million fundraising round for a Bitcoin financial technology business as a strategic investor together with the likes of MassMutual, FS Investments, and Morgan Stanley, among others, demonstrating increasing institutional adoption and therefore increased liquidity of Bitcoin.
More recently, in a December 31st, 2022 13F filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Soros’ fund increased its digital asset exposure, purchasing $8,984,659 in convertible notes of crypto miner Marathon Digital Holdings convertible into 39.6 million common shares
On top of that, prior information shows that Soros Fund Management also owned both call and put options on 50,000 shares of enterprise business intelligence (BI) software vendor MicroStrategy. This is likely due to MicroStrategy’s status as a Bitcoin proxy due to its massive bitcoin purchases – recently increased to 140,000 BTC (around $4.2 bn).
MicroStrategy has acquired an additional 1,045 #bitcoin for ~ $29.3M at an average price of $28,016 per bitcoin. As of 4/4/2023 @MicroStrategy holds 140,000 bitcoin acquired for ~$4.17 billion at an average price of $29,803 per bitcoin. $MSTR https://t.co/IBufTxalnv
— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) April 5, 2023
While the billionaire’s private crypto holdings aren’t known to the public, Alex Jones said he had rejected $5 million in BTC from Soros to pump up the cryptocurrency, as he told Joe Rogan in an episode of the ‘Joe Rogan Experience’ in February 2019. Assuming Jones was honest, Soros owned upwards of 760 Bitcoin at the time, which would be worth about $23 million in today’s prices.
Join the telegram channel for updates, charts, ideas and deals.
Did you like the article? Share it!
