Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood Sticks with Crypto, Says Bitcoin and Ethereum Are ‘on the Right Track’

The popular tech-focused fund manager Cathie Wood has declared that she will stick with her crypto investments, while praising Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) as decentralized blockchains that have given her confidence in the space.

Speaking with CNBC on Monday this week, Cathie Wood, the CEO of asset management firm Ark Invest, praised Bitcoin in particular for being the most decentralized and transparent blockchain in the crypto space. She also made comparisons with the disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, and said there are obvious reasons why he preferred other blockchains over Bitcoin.

“Sam Bankman-Fried didn’t like bitcoin. Why didn’t he like it? Because it’s completely decentralized, transparent, he couldn’t control it,” Wood said in the interview.

She added that the firms that went under during the crypto market downturn last year, including FTX, crypto lender Celsius, and hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) were all “completely opaque and centralized.”

The decentralized blockchains themselves, on the other hand, remained resilient, Wood explained:

“The blockchains, whether you talk about Bitcoin or Ethereum and many others, they didn’t skip a beat. Transactions did not stop. And I think that has given us a lot of confidence that actually they are on the right track.”

“Three revolutions”

The popular fund manager further elaborated on her thesis for the crypto space and how it is disrupting traditional finance and making an impact on broader society. According to the investor, there are “three revolutions” that are being fuelled by the rise of crypto.

“There’s the money revolution, which is mostly bitcoin, or bitcoin and ether. There is the financial services revolution, which is Ethereum. And there’s this notion of digital property rights… that’s Web3,” she said on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street.

.@ARKInvest CEO @CathieDWood tells @carlquintanilla and @SaraEisen that she is confident that decentralized and transparent blockchains like #Bitcoin and #Ethereum are "on the right track." $BTC $ETH pic.twitter.com/daDQIc2UzT

— Squawk on the Street (@SquawkStreet) February 27, 2023