FTX customers still don’t know if they’re going to get their money back; Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial 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 primed for a massive comeback.
Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment Management, the firm that has continued to buy crypto and shares of crypto companies even during the sector’s historic downturn over the past year, is betting on Bitcoin rising to new heights soon enough. All investors need is a little patience and faith.
ARK forecasted Bitcoin to bounce back from its current lows to eventually be worth $1.48 million by 2030 in a new report published this week, a bullish scenario that would see Bitcoin’s value rising by more than 6,300% in just seven years.
Bitcoin is currently trading at around $23,000, a far cry from its all-time high of nearly $70,000 achieved in November 2021. Those were good times for crypto bulls, when up to a quarter of holders were convinced that Bitcoin could exceed $100,000 in fewer than five years. Cathie Wood was exceptionally upbeat about Bitcoin’s chances, even predicting in 2021 that it could hit $500,000 by 2026 if institutional investors and investment banks began piling in.
That was also peak crypto, as it turns out. As inflation rose last year and enthusiasm for speculative assets including cryptocurrencies dwindled, the Crypto Winter began and coins tumbled in value.
In the 12 months after its November 2021 peak, the sector shaved off over $2 trillion in value, with Bitcoin in particular down 65% since then. Crypto companies that had become mainstays, including Coinbase and Genesis, began cutting back and laying off staff. A number of crypto companies including Three Arrows Capital and Celsius filed for bankruptcy, while the entire industry was rocked in November when FTX, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, collapsed and lost over $8 billion in customer funds.
But through it all, Cathie Wood and ARK have held firm on their big Bitcoin bet. Even during the cataclysmic FTX implosion, ARK research director Frank Downing said the firm’s conviction in Bitcoin’s underlying blockchain technology had “only increased” in the wake of the crash. In December, Wood tweeted that the Bitcoin blockchain “didn’t skip a beat” during the FTX debacle, which she took to signify the coin’s transparency and resilience during downtimes.
Over the next seven years, ARK expects Bitcoin to become a “multitrillion-dollar market” because of its strong fundamentals, according to the new report, as the firm expects the crypto asset to outperform “every major asset class over longer time horizons.” The sector’s recent difficulties may even help restore trust 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 on 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.
