Bitcoin Could Hit $500,000, According to ARK Invest’s Catherine Wood

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The worth of Bitcoin has been on a tear, rising almost 160% this yr and about 25% month so far. That may be only the start, ARK Funding Administration CEO Catherine Wooden advised Barron’s readers Thursday.

Bitcoin’s current rise to $18,640 might give traders flashbacks to 2017, when the cryptocurrency reached a excessive of $19,783.21 in December earlier than promoting off. This time is completely different for one large motive, Wooden mentioned: the involvement of institutional traders, which she mentioned may drive Bitcoin’s worth to $500,000.

The founding father of ARK and a famous booster of disruptive applied sciences corresponding to Bitcoin and Tesla advised attendees of Barron’s virtual Investing in Tech series that Bitcoin is probably the most acknowledged forex of the crypto-asset ecosystem. “It’s the equal to the greenback within the fiat forex system,” she mentioned. “That’s a reasonably exalted position.”

Wooden added that the rise of central-bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, has added legitimacy to Bitcoin, referencing China’s ambitions to launch a digital yuan.

Some investors, she said, see Bitcoin as a digital alternative to gold or an insurance policy against inflation. With the Federal Reserve’s decision to keep interest rates low for the foreseeable future, that’s one reason Bitcoin’s price could be rising. And if institutional investors like hedge funds were to take a greater interest in Bitcoin, it could send prices even higher, Wood said. What’s more, Wood noted the supply of Bitcoin units tops out at 21 million. There are about 18.5 million currently in existence, she said.

Wood said institutions have been bumping up their exposure to the cryptocurrency recently, drawing a comparison to “the early days of institutions moving into real estate and emerging markets,” when allocations started small, then grew. “They started out with a half a percent allocation, then [1%], and then 5% or thereabout seemed to be the right number.”

If all institutions were to assign a similar mid-single-digit allocation to Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency could rise “to somewhere in the $400,000 to $500,000 range,” Wood said.

Tesla

(ticker: TSLA) additionally has room to develop, regardless of its momentous 491% year-to-date rise, Wooden mentioned—though she added, “because the saying goes, the simple cash has been made.”

Wooden mentioned establishments centered on benchmarks “will most likely transfer into the inventory” following the corporate’s inclusion within the

S&P 500,

announced this week. “If we’re proper, [Tesla] has miles to go—miles and miles to go.”

Traders ought to have a look at Tesla as a real expertise inventory, not as an auto-manufacturing inventory, she advised attendees, including that the inventory’s lofty valuation shouldn’t be a priority. “Most individuals don’t perceive what this animal actually is,” she mentioned. “It’s a expertise inventory, and it’s working away with the electric-vehicle market in a means that I believe has been shocking to most.”

The longer term for Tesla is within the autonomous automobile house, Wooden mentioned. “We imagine it’s within the pole place to turn into—in the US, a minimum of—the dominant autonomous taxi community throughout the subsequent few years.”

Wooden additionally touched on recent news that Resolute Funding Managers, ARK funds’ U.S. distributor, moved to take over the enterprise subsequent yr. She referred to ARK’s prior assertion on this improvement, through which she mentioned she was “upset” by the information. Wooden mentioned many know that “we don’t want this to occur,” including “we’re in negotiations, and so I’ll simply go away it there.”

E mail: Shaina Mishkin at shaina.mishkin@dowjones.com