Cathie Wood’s ARK says Bitcoin could reach $1.5 million in 7 years
FTX customers still do not know if they will get their money back; Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal case is ongoing; and the crypto winter of deflated coin values continues to drag on. But one of cryptocurrency’s biggest optimists still says the coin that started it all is poised for a massive comeback.
Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment Management, the firm that has continued to buy crypto and shares in crypto companies even during the sector’s historic downturn in the past year, is betting that Bitcoin will soon rise to new heights. All investors need is a little patience and faith.
ARK predicted that Bitcoin would rebound from its current lows and eventually be worth $1.48 million by 2030 in a new report published this week, a bullish scenario that would see Bitcoin’s value rise by more than 6,300% in just seven year.
Bitcoin is currently trading at around $23,000, a far cry from the all-time high of nearly $70,000 reached in November 2021. Times were good for crypto bulls, as up to a quarter of owners were convinced that Bitcoin could surpass $100,000 on less than five years. Cathie Wood was exceptionally optimistic about Bitcoin’s chances, even predicting in 2021 that it could reach $500,000 by 2026 if institutional investors and investment banks started piling in.
It was also top crypto, as it turns out. As inflation rose last year and enthusiasm for speculative assets, including cryptocurrencies, waned, Crypto Winter began and coins fell in value.
In the 12 months following the November 2021 peak, the sector shaved over $2 trillion in value, with Bitcoin in particular down 65% since then. Crypto companies that had become mainstays, including Coinbase and Genesis, began downsizing and laying off employees. A number of crypto companies including Three Arrows Capital and Celsius filed for bankruptcy, while the entire industry was shaken in November when FTX, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, collapsed, losing over $8 billion in client funds.
But through it all, Cathie Wood and ARK have stuck to their big Bitcoin bet. Even during the disastrous FTX implosion, ARK’s director of research Frank Downing said the firm’s belief in Bitcoin’s underlying blockchain technology had “only increased” in the aftermath of the crash. In December, Wood tweeted that the Bitcoin blockchain “didn’t skip a beat” during the FTX debacle, which she took to highlight the coin’s openness and resilience during downtime.
Over the next seven years, ARK expects Bitcoin to become a “multibillion-dollar market” due to its strong fundamentals, according to the new report, as the firm expects the crypto-asset to outperform “all major asset classes over longer time horizons.” The sector’s recent difficulties may even help restore confidence in Bitcoin in the long term as exchange companies become more transparent with their finances to avoid a similar fate that befell FTX, ARK argued. Institutional investors, including BlackRock and Fidelity, have not wavered in their commitment to Bitcoin despite the market downturn, the report also found, reinforcing the coin’s fundamentals.
Even in ARK’s “bear case” scenario, Bitcoin’s value is expected to rise to a record $258,500 by 2030. In the firm’s “base case” scenario, Bitcoin will grow to be worth $682,800.
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