ARK’s Wood Sees $20T Bitcoin ‘Ecosystem’ by 2030

Famed investor and ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood expects trillions of investor dollars will flow into spot bitcoin ETFs and the digital-asset industry at large in the next decade. 

Wood predicts about $20 trillion in the bitcoin market and $5 trillion in ethereum potentially by 2030, pointing to an increase in institutional investment in bitcoin, as well as a wider acceptance of use cases for digital assets by traditional financial firms. 

“Right now, we’re somewhere between one and one-and-a-half trillion [dollars] for the ecosystem,” said Wood while speaking on a panel for a New York press event on Tuesday. “We see that scaling to $25 trillion in the next five to 10 years.”

Although the cryptocurrency industry has been plagued by fraud and companies imploding, firms pursuing the launch of a spot bitcoin ETF are banking on broader adoption of bitcoin and ethereum by the traditional financial markets.

So far, the Securities and Exchange Commission has rejected all bids for a spot bitcoin ETF, but the agency is currently in talks with firms to work toward a potential approval. The discussions follow the SEC’s loss of a watershed court case to Grayscale Investments in August, when judges ruled the agency had been wrong to block Grayscale’s application to convert its bitcoin trust into an exchange-traded fund.

Wood Predicts Investor Enthusiasm for Bitcoin ETF

In an interview with etf.com Tuesday, Wood said she believes institutional investors will turn toward bitcoin when they see its value.

“Typically, institutions will tiptoe in with one percent…then they’ll get more educated and intrigued and build their positions the more they understand,” she explained. Wood expects between 2% and 6.5% of institutional allocation into bitcoin in this time frame.

She also noted that investors can use bitcoin as a hedge against both inflation and deflation, pointing to investors looking towards bitcoin in reaction to the regional banking crisis this past spring. 

Contact Lucy Brewster at [email protected].