Most Influential: Cathie Wood

It says a lot about the ever-bullish outlook of Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood that she predicted bitcoin to reach $1.2 million by 2030, and it was, in fact, a downgrade.

This feature is a part of CoinDesk's Most Influential 2025 list.

Cathie Wood made her forecast for BTC's price in November 2025, slightly revising the target down from $1.5 million based on the explosive rise of stablecoins, which she claimed may usurp some of bitcoin's value as a transactional instrument.

Her impact on cryptocurrency goes beyond her notoriously bullish predictions, however. Ark's spot bitcoin ETF, which it listed in partnership with 21Shares, is the third-largest such product in the U.S. behind only the runaway market leaders provided by asset management giants BlackRock and Fidelity.

Wood's optimistic outlook for the cryptocurrency industry is evident in the holdings of some of Ark's largest ETFs. The firm’s $8.4 billion Innovation ETF counts crypto exchange Coinbase among its largest holdings, as do two of Ark's other largest ETFs by net assets.

The initial public offerings (IPOs) in 2025 of stablecoin issuer Circle and crypto exchange Bullish (the parent company of CoinDesk) also prompted sizeable investments by Ark.

Through its ETFs, Ark and, by extension, Wood, who also holds the role of chief investment officer (CIO), may represent a North Star for understanding which disruptive technologies are likely to provide the most lucrative high-growth plays.