Cathie Wood believes investors are “flighting to safety” in “risk-off” Bitcoin and Ether during the macroeconomic upheaval.
Recent financial instability has demonstrated both Bitcoin BTC($29,966) and ETH ($2,095) withstand unstable economic conditions and outperform other asset classes.
Cathie Wood, CEO of ARK Invest, claims that alternative investments may work like gold, sustain an unstable economy, and beat traditional asset classes. However, one seasoned investor isn’t convinced.
The endurance of Bitcoin during the most recent banking crisis, according to Wood in an interview on April 15, has been “the most astounding” of all the signs her tech-focused investment management firm is keeping an eye on.
In light of the macroeconomic unpredictability, she asserted that Bitcoin and Ether are currently behaving as “risk-off” assets and as a “flight to safety” for investors:
“They’re going to disrupt the traditional world order. What are Bitcoin and Ether doing? I mean by the very fact that they’re being considered flight to safety like gold, that’s really interesting and suggests much broader-based adoption and acceptance than I think most people understand.”
“We would say that there is a flight to safety, certainly led by crypto assets, and it is telling us that the world is transforming and will continue to transform. You cannot stop innovation,” she added.
According to Wood, when cryptocurrencies are embraced more widely and the public can more clearly see the types of regulatory constraints that the US government is placing on the business to maintain centralized control of money and monetary policy, they will eventually become an “election issue.”
Not everyone concurs with Wood.
In a 12 April interview, Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio claimed that Bitcoin could not function as an “effective currency” because it is too volatile and that central banks won’t accept it:
“Bitcoin is neither an effective store hold of wealth or a medium of exchange so it is not an effective currency. It has a volatility to it that has no relation to practically anything […] it’s a very, very poor alternative to gold.”
“They can outlaw [Bitcoin]. They can regulate it. Central banks and countries pretty much don’t want it anyway,” he said, adding that it gets attention “way out of proportion” to its size.
Dalio has previously referred to Bitcoin as “one heck of an innovation,” but he recently stated that he prefers to see the creation of an “inflation-linked” coin that would help to guarantee that people would have secure access to their purchasing power.
