ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood said she would “make a shift from gold into Bitcoin” after gold’s run left the metal looking extended on a key liquidity-adjusted measure, arguing that bitcoin’s supply dynamics and long-term adoption case still favor the crypto asset despite a sluggish year.
Speaking on a Feb. 2 episode of The Rundown interview, Wood framed the call as part of a broader “great acceleration” thesis laid out in ARK’s latest “Big Ideas” report, which expects AI-driven capital expenditure to surge and spill into robotics, energy storage, blockchain, and life sciences through what she described as converging S-curves.
Sell Gold, Buy Bitcoin Now?
Wood pushed back on the idea that bitcoin has “lost its mojo” as gold has outperformed in recent years, starting with a statistical point. “First thing you should know, Bitcoin and gold are not correlated. We did the analysis […] the correlation […] is as close to zero as you can get so no correlation,” she said, adding that in the last two market cycles, gold led bitcoin before the crypto asset caught up.
Her more forceful warning was directed at gold’s positioning versus broad money. “You’ll find this […] a chart showing gold divided by M2. It has only been—it has never been higher. It hit a new all-time high this week,” Wood said, arguing the setup resembles historical extremes that coincided with very different macro regimes. “Gold is probably riding for a fall […] The last two times it was anywhere near this was in the massive inflation […] in the 70s early 80s and […] the Great Depression.”
Wood said the stablecoin boom has absorbed some of bitcoin’s “emerging markets” transaction narrative, but she characterized that as a payments-layer substitution rather than a savings-layer replacement. “That’s just for the equivalent of a checking account. When they want real savings, they’re going to buy Bitcoin, we believe,” she said, tying the view to ARK’s long-term upside case. She referenced a bull-case target of $1.5 million by 2030 in the conversation, alongside the firm’s previously discussed seven-figure framework.
Her core comparative claim against gold centered on issuance. “The supply growth of Bitcoin is 0.8% per year and it’ll drop to 0.4 in another two years,” Wood said, contrasting it with gold supply growth she pegged at about 1% on average and suggesting mining output could run higher than bitcoin’s deterministic issuance rate. She also pointed to “intergenerational wealth transfer” as a potential tailwind for bitcoin over time.
Wood also offered a more tactical explanation for why bitcoin has struggled to sustain upside momentum, pointing to what she described as an October 10 “flash crash” tied to a software glitch at Binance and an auto-deleveraging cascade. “There was a flash crash caused by a software glitch at Binance and there was an auto deleveraging event,” she said. “People were just […] margin called to the tune of about 28 billion dollars […] and we think that is just now washing through the system.”
Because bitcoin is “the most liquid of all crypto assets,” Wood argued it becomes “the first margin call,” making it the primary source of forced selling during broad deleveraging. She suggested that overhang is now fading, but her comments came before Monday’s downdraft that saw bitcoin slide to $74,600. In the interview, she said the market was “testing […] around 80,000 again” and expected it to “hold in the 80 to 90,000 range” absent a major geopolitical shock. “Unless all hell breaks loose in Iran […] then maybe we’ll see the store of value come back for Bitcoin,” she added.
At press time, BTC traded at $78,377.
