Ethereum, according to Soros’ fund manager, has a better chance of gaining popularity than Bitcoin. Dawn Fitzpatrick, the chief executive and investment officer of Soros’ $28 billion family office, stated on May 31 in a Bloomberg interview that cryptocurrency has already gone mainstream and is here to stay, despite the looming threats of a worldwide recession.
Dawn stated:
“Crypto isn’t going anywhere. I believe it has become mainstream. You may now deposit it in your 401(k) with Fidelity (k). The one caution I would add is that, first and foremost, climate change will become increasingly prominent. As a result, I believe Ethereum will gain traction over Bitcoin in this situation.”
Fitzpatrick’s remarks come as Ethereum, the world’s most popular smart contract blockchain, prepares to switch from the energy-intensive Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism to the substantially more environmentally friendly Proof-of-Stake mechanism later this year. Ropsten, the network’s lone Proof-of-Work testnet, started its own Proof-of-Stake beacon chain on Monday, with the two test chains set to join on June 8. Before the mainnet switches to Proof-of-Stake, the successful fusion of Ropsten’s test chains would be the penultimate stage. This might happen as soon as August, according to one Ethereum engineer, however Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has stated that September or October is most likely.
Fitzpatrick also believes that the markets are overpricing recession risks, claiming that American consumers are in “extraordinarily” good health and that the economy has some “shock absorbers built in.”
She further stated:
“There’s a lot of talk about a coming recession, but the truth is that one is unavoidable—just it’s a question of when. And, depending on whatever asset classes you’re looking at, markets are pricing it quite soon, so in the 2023 timeframe. Actually, I believe the markets are incorrect. The explanation for this is that the customer in front of you is in excellent health.”
Fitzpatrick went on to say that she did not believe the globe would avoid a recession, but that it would be “far out than people assume.” Interestingly, while appearing to be more optimistic on Ethereum than Bitcoin, the Soros fund has only acknowledged that it has Bitcoin so far.
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