In a recent interview, Catherine Wood, Founder, CIO, and CEO at ARK Investment Management, LLC (aka “ARK” or “ARK Invest”), shared her thoughts on Bitcoin.
On March 23, during a conversation with Dr. Art Laffer, her mentor, former professor, and advisor to her firm, Wood said that if people’s confidence in traditional global monetary systems declines, they may increasingly turn to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. This shift could cause the price of Bitcoin to skyrocket. As she reminded listeners, there are only two million more Bitcoin units to be minted.
Wood stated,
“[Bitcoin is] playing the store of value role right now. And, if the global monetary systems right now, shall I say, lose the confidence of people generally, there will be a shift to more crypto from a store of value point of view, certainly. What will happen then is the price of Bitcoin – remember there are only two million more to be minted – the price of Bitcoin will go through the roof.”
Wood also highlighted Bitcoin’s limited supply, which is capped at 21 million units. Currently, the annual inflation rate for Bitcoin is 1.8%, representing the amount being mined each year. This rate, however, will halve in a couple of years to less than 1% and continue to decrease until the maximum supply is reached.
With 19 million Bitcoin units already circulating, Wood pointed to the recent surge in its price from $19,000 to almost $29,000 as evidence that people believe it holds value. She expressed faith in the developers, coders, and programmers who designed Bitcoin’s mathematical structure, asserting that they are unlikely to alter it, which further reinforces Bitcoin’s status as a store of value.
On February 1, during a conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin, co-anchor of CNBC’s “Squawk Box”, she was asked if she still believes that the Bitcoin price will be $500K.
Wood replied:
“Yes, we are. In fact, we’re a little higher than that in our base case for the year 2030. And in our bull case, much higher. If you look at what is happening in the last year, actually Sam Bankman-Fried didn’t like Bitcoin at all, and he didn’t like it because of its decentralization and transparency.
“And what companies went under, they were the highly centralized, non-transparent opaque companies, so FTX, Celsius, Three Arrows Capital. If you look at what happened to Bitcoin, the network, and Ethereum, the network, they really didn’t skip a beat at all. All transactions were completed. All smart contracts opened and closed.
“So I think that starting with 2008-2009, which is when Bitcoin really debuted and even more so after the crypto fallout this past year — the collapse in many companies — this idea of transparency and decentralization is taking hold, and bitcoin and Ethereum are the two best manifestations of that in the crypto world.“
