Key Takeaways
- Dawn Fitzpatrick, Soros’ family office head, has said that Ethereum is likely to outpace Bitcoin in the future due to increasing environmental concerns.
- She also said that crypto is here to stay and has already gone mainstream.
- Commenting on the looming risks of recession, she said that it is unavoidable but will also be “further out than people expect.”
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Dawn Fitzpatrick, chief executive and chief investment officer of Soros Fund Management, has said that crypto has already gone mainstream and “is here to stay.”
Soros Fund’s Fitzpatrick Says Crypto is Here to Stay
According to Soros’ fund manager, Ethereum could gain more traction than Bitcoin.
In a Bloomberg interview aired today, the chief executive and investment officer of Soros’ $28 billion family office, Dawn Fitzpatrick, said that crypto has already gone mainstream and is here to stay despite the looming risks of a global recession. Speaking on “Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein,” she said:
“[Crypto] is here to stay. I think it’s gone mainstream. Fidelity just announced you can put it in your 401(k). The one caveat I would say is, first of all, climate impact is going to become increasingly in focus. So, in that context, I think Ethereum is likely to gain some more traction over Bitcoin.”
Fitzpatrick’s comments come as the leading smart contract blockchain Ethereum is preparing to move away from the energy-intensive Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism to a significantly more environmentally-friendly Proof-of-Stake mechanism sometime later this year. On Monday, the network’s only Proof-of-Work testnet, Ropsten, launched its own Proof-of-Stake beacon chain with plans to merge the two test chains on June 8. The successful merge of Ropsten’s test chains would be the final step before the mainnet transitions to Proof-of-Stake. According to one Ethereum developer, this could happen as soon as August, although Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin has said that September or October may be more realistic.
Fitzpatrick also said that she thinks the markets might be wrong on how they’re pricing the recession risks, explaining that the U.S. consumers are in “extraordinarily” good shape and that the economy had some “shock absorbers built-in.” She said:
“There’s a lot of discussion about a looming recession, and the bottom line is, a recession is inevitable—it’s a matter of when. And when you look at what markets are pricing here, they’re pricing it fairly soon, so in the 2023 context—depending on which asset classes you’re looking at. I actually think markets might be wrong. And the reason is, that the consumer right here is in extraordinarily good shape.”
Fitzpatrick further clarified that she didn’t think the world would avoid a recession but rather that “it’ll be further out than people expect.” Interestingly, despite appearing more bullish on Ethereum than Bitcoin, the Soros fund has only revealed that it holds Bitcoin and not any other cryptocurrencies to date.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.
