Bitcoin boom to $55,000 gathers steam from Soros fund backing

A bull run in Bitcoin has sent the coin above $55,000 level with a 17 percent rise in the last seven days. The rally accelerated further with Soros Fund Management, helmed by legendary investor George Soros, confirming that it was trading the cryptocurrency.

Dawn Fitzpatrick, the fund's chief executive, mentioned to Bloomberg that the company owns some coins, not a lot, and that “the coins themselves are less interesting than the use cases of Defi and things like that".

Surging almost 6 percent in a single day, Bitcoin reached its five-month high after a significant dry run, breaching the coveted $50,000 mark for the first time in a month. Many experts hope that the market leader will touch its all-time high this month, given that historically, October is a month of boom for the coin. 

On being asked about Bitcoin entering the financial mainstream, Fitzpatrick explained that it has far surpassed its sole identity of being an inflation hedge. “I’m not sure if Bitcoin is only viewed as an inflation hedge. Here I think it’s crossed the chasm to the mainstream. Cryptocurrencies now have a market cap of over $2 trillion. There are 200 million users around the world, so I think this has gone mainstream,” he said. 

The Soros fund is also an investor in crypto firms such as NYDIG and Lukka, giving heat to a rising trend of family offices diving deeper into the cryptocurrency space, with  Steve Cohen's Point72 Asset Management investing in crypto startups such as Messari and Zero Hash. Even Dan Loeb’s Third Point fund reportedly wades in cryptocurrency.

In sync with the market frenzy, many other tokens followed the rising suit. While Ethereum ($3,532) rose 16 percent over the last seven days, XRP ($1.07) surged almost 11 percent, along with Dogecoin, Polkadot, and Terra. Meme coin Shiba Inu also saw an exponential surge of about 74.3 percent in its trading volume in the last 24 hours.