Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Investment, has doubled her prediction that the price of Bitcoin will grow by ten in the next five years and said the growth of DeFi, NFT and the Eth2 upgrade have massively increased confidence in Ark in the future of Ether. .
Wood’s forecast would value Bitcoin at nearly $ 500,000 by 2026. He said Ark Investment’s future exposure to cryptocurrencies is likely to be around 60% Bitcoin and 40% Ethereum.
Wood made the comments Monday, during a live broadcast at the SALT Conference in New York.
His BTC pricing thesis is based on more companies adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets and having institutional investors allocate about 5% of their portfolios to Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.
In his view, Bitcoin remains the default currency of the cryptocurrency space, El Salvador considers it to be legal tender and other Central American countries indicate that they could follow soon.
But he said Ethereum is becoming more attractive as an investment thanks to the explosion of developer activity related to NFT and DeFi.
“I’m fascinated with what’s happening at DeFi, which is collapsing the cost of financial services infrastructure in a way that I know the traditional financial industry doesn’t appreciate right now,” he said.
“Our confidence in Ethereum has increased dramatically as we have seen the beginning of the transition from the working test to the betting test.”
Ark Investment manages several actively traded funds with a focus on disruptive innovation. With significant investments in Coinbase and participating in the Bitcoin Trust grayscale, Wood has spoken frequently about his enthusiasm for Bitcoin.
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Wood said from past experience he believed no regulator, including new SEC President Gary Gensler, would want to blame himself for preventing the next major technological breakthrough.
“I’m very happy that you understand cryptocurrency and the merits of Bitcoin in particular, but it’s a regulator and it’s an unconditional regulator.”
Wood believes the SEC’s threats to take legal action against Coinbase over the launch of a stablecoin performance product highlights that the cryptographic ecosystem is developing faster than regulators have been able to follow.
In his view, Coinbase should not be particularly concerned. Wood noted that in October 2019, Canada’s largest digital resource and asset fund manager received a favorable ruling from the Ontario Securities Commission (CSO) to offer a Bitcoin trading fund public.