It says a lot about Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood’s always bullish outlook that she predicted bitcoin would hit $1.2 million by 2030 and that was actually a downgrade.
This feature is part of CoinDesk’s The list of most influential 2025.
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 growth of stablecoins, which she argued may usurp some of bitcoin’s value as a transaction instrument.
However, her impact on cryptocurrency goes beyond her notoriously bullish predictions. Ark’s spot bitcoin ETF, which it listed in partnership with 21Shares, is the third-largest product in the US 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 2025 initial public offerings (IPOs) of stablecoin issuer Circle and crypto exchange Bullish (the parent company of CoinDesk) also prompted significant investment from Ark.
Through its ETFs, Ark and, by extension, Wood, who also holds the role of chief investment officer (CIO), can represent a north star for understanding which disruptive technologies are likely to provide the most lucrative high-growth plays.
