ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood maintains her $730,000 base case Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) target for 2030 and says the bull market is still intact despite a 50% drawdown from all-time highs.
Gold Leading Bitcoin, Just Like Last Cycle
Wood explained that Bitcoin’s correlation to gold since 2019 stands at just 0.14, but gold has historically rallied before Bitcoin in previous cycles. She thinks the same pattern is playing out now.
“Bitcoin relative to gold has had a significant drop, but if you look at the longer term, you’ll see higher lows in terms of the very long-term trend line,” Wood said on The Rollup podcast. “The Bitcoin bull market is still intact,” she added.
ARK’s bull case projects Bitcoin reaching $1.5 million by 2030. Wood acknowledged taking flack for saying stablecoins had usurped some of Bitcoin’s role in emerging markets, but noted gold rallying simultaneously impacts Bitcoin’s store of value narrative.
Fed Already Easing, Inflation Collapsing
Wood said the Federal Reserve has already started easing with the Fed funds rate down 175 basis points, contradicting the narrative that the Fed remains too hawkish.
She expects inflation to surprise dramatically on the low side, forcing the Fed to ease further.
“The Fed funds rate is down 175 basis points. And yet the narrative out there is oh they’re too hawkish. They have started easing,” Wood said.
She pointed to TrueFlation’s blockchain-based consumer price inflation measure at 1.8% and core inflation at just 1.3%. AI training costs are dropping 75% per year while AI inference costs are dropping 85% to 95% annually, creating massive deflation.
Youth unemployment sits at 8.5%, signaling slack in the employment market. Companies are not firing but not hiring either, pulling wage growth down as productivity accelerates.
Institutional Buyers Averaging Down
Wood emphasized that institutional Bitcoin ETF holders have remained strong throughout the downcycle.
Traditional asset managers who learned about Bitcoin’s four-year cycle see a 50% drop as a severe bear market and an opportunity to average down.
“You’ve had weak holders who have exited, but you’ve had them backfilled by institutions who are really beginning to understand what this new asset class is,” Wood said.
ARK’s David Puell said absolute capitulation would occur in the $50,000 to $55,000 range, though Wood doubts Bitcoin reaches those levels based on current price action.
The Tokenization Thesis
Wood projects the global market for tokenized assets could surpass $11 trillion by 2030.
She said stable coins have become the bridge from traditional finance into DeFi, with the network effect favoring Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC.
“The biggest surprise to us from the early days of Bitcoin to now was the evolution of stablecoins backed by fiat,” Wood concluded.
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