Cathie Wood opines that Venmo is simply a follower of Cash App, which has more than doubled Venmo’s earnings from about half the number of customers.
Cathie Wood, the founder of crypto investment firm Ark Invest, has sold all of the firm’s PayPal assets and expressed higher confidence in the long-term growth of the Cash App payment system, which uses the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
Wood discussed her company’s decision during the Miami Bitcoin 2022 conference, which concluded on April 9.
The Lightning Network (LN) is a layer-2 Bitcoin solution that allows for faster and cheaper transactions. PayPal, a financial technology business, operates the payment software Venmo, which competes directly with Block’s (previously Square) Cash App.
Wood stated in an interview with CNBC on April 8 that she chose Cash App over PayPal because of its more complete approach to digital asset wallet integration. Although Venmo has begun to accept Bitcoin (BTC), she claims that “it’s more of a follower of Cash App.”
“We tend to put our bets with who we believe will be the winners… As we consolidated our portfolios during a risk-off period, we chose Block over PayPal.”
Wood went on to say that her company’s belief in Cash App originates from what she sees as organically-driven growth in users “as opposed to more of a top-down approach” from Venmo.
Wood believes that retail investors have driven the crypto market to this stage, as she stated:
“I don’t think most institutional investors are positioned the way they ultimately will be. Retail has led the charge here.”
According to app tracker Business of Apps, Venmo presently has 70 million users and $850 million in earnings, while Cash App has 44 million users and $2.03 billion in profit in 2021. Another motivator for Ark’s evaluation of the two companies could be the significant difference in their capacity to generate net profits.
Because Ark Invest believes in Cash App, its Bitcoin product lead Miles Suter announced on April 7 that American users will be able to automatically invest a percentage of their direct transfers into Bitcoin.
Wood is a strong Bitcoin supporter, and she predicted in the interview that BTC would reach $1 million by 2030.
