After a phenomenal rally in the first half of this year, the bitcoin and cryptocurrency price bull run has come to a halt, with some issuing dire predictions for bitcoin's future.
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Despite multiple attempts to break through the psychological barrier, the bitcoin price has been unable to stay above $50,000 per bitcoin. In the meantime, ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency after bitcoin, has lost ground on its all-time high set in May.
Despite bitcoin's recent struggles, Cathie Wood, the CEO of Ark Invest, has predicted the bitcoin price will hit $500,000 in just a few years—and revealed her confidence in ethereum "has gone up dramatically."
"If we're correct, and companies continue to diversify their cash into something like bitcoin, and institutional investors start allocating 5% of their funds to bitcoin, we believe the price will be ten-fold of where it is today," Wood said at the Salt technology conference in New York, speaking to CNBC anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin. "So instead of $45,000, we're talking about over $500,000."
In July, Wood joined Musk and Twitter's Jack Dorsey in a live discussion about bitcoin's potential, as well as ethereum and the meme-based dogecoin.
Wood named bitcoin her top cryptocurrency because "countries are now deeming [bitcoin] legal tender." However, she's also bullish on the ethereum price and sees the Ark portfolio split 60 percent ethereum and 40 percent bitcoin.
El Salvador made history earlier this month by adopting bitcoin as its official currency alongside the US dollar, igniting speculation that other countries will follow suit. Following its decision to legalize bitcoin last week, some have speculated that Ukraine may adopt it in the future, and a former Malaysian prime minister has stated that his country should "encourage" crypto investors to invest in Malaysia.
"Thanks to NFTs and DeFi, [Ethereum] is seeing an explosion in developer activity," Wood said, referring to the craze for digital collectible non-fungible tokens and an explosion in crypto-based decentralized finance, which aims to recreate lending and interest without the use of banks.
"Thanks to NFTs and other technologies, [Ethereum] is seeing a surge in developer activity."
The rally in ethereum and its many rivals, which has seen the combined crypto market soar from around $700 billion to over $2.1 trillion this year, is primarily due to rallies in ethereum and its many rivals.
"What's going on with DeFi fascinates me because it's lowering the cost of infrastructure for financial services in a way that I know the traditional financial industry doesn't understand right now," Wood said. "As we've seen the beginning of this shift from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, our trust in ethereum has skyrocketed."
Late last year, ethereum launched a long-awaited move from energy-intensive proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, intended to help the network scale and become more efficient. However, the refurbishment will not be completed until 2022.
Wood, who believes Elon Musk's Tesla will skyrocket in value in the following years, hailed the dogecoin-loving billionaire. "[Musk is] a visionary," she claimed, anticipating "explosive growth" and committing Ark to "nothing but revolutionary innovation."
"I believe that millennials will propel both the crypto and equities markets," Wood continued.
