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Bitcoin continued to hover above $50,000, topping $55,000 Wednesday afternoon before falling back below $54,000 Thursday morning.
The cryptocurrency was trading at around $45,000 a week ago, up from summer lows of around $30,000. A Wednesday Fundstrat research note expected Bitcoin to reach spring highs near $65,000 by November.
“This remains a bullish move, and it’s right to be bullish technically, and buy dips,” according to the note.
Bitcoin’s surge may have also be influenced by the disclosure that billionaire investor George Soros’s fund, Soros Fund Management, owns Bitcoin. In a Bloomberg interview, CEO Dawn Fitzpatrick confirmed that Soros’s family office owned some coins.
“I’m not sure Bitcoin is only viewed as an inflation hedge here,” Fitzpatrick said. “You know, I think it’s crossed the chasm to mainstream.”
Soros’ fund is the latest institutional investor to be getting into the crypto space. Wall Street has gradually begun to adopt digital assets, with
Bank of America
saying on Monday it would be launching research of digital assets.
Cryptocurrencies rallied this week after Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler testified in a House hearing that he had no intention of banning crypto transactions. “That would be up to Congress,” he said. Gensler’s comments came just a week after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told a House committee the Fed didn’t plan on banning the asset class.
Meme-based token Shiba Inu became the 12th-biggest cryptocurrency after seeing a 391% rise in a week to $0.00003443, pushing the currency’s market capitalization to nearly $14 billion for the first time, according to
Coinbase
.
Shiba Inu began climbing after Oct. 3, when Elon Musk tweeted a picture of his dog, a Shiba Inu named Floki.
Bitcoin and Shiba appear to be outperforming the crypto market. Ethereum, the second-largest currency, was trading at $3,628.33, a 27.3% increase since Sept. 30, and meme-token Dogecoin increased by 26.3%.
Write to Sabrina Escobar at sabrina.escobar@barrons.com
