ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood Says ‘Substitution’ of Gold for Bitcoin (BTC) Now Underway

ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood says Bitcoin (BTC) is effectively substituting gold as a store of value asset.

In a new YouTube update, Wood says that she believes the crypto king is acting more as a risk-off asset and a “flight to quality” during times of economic uncertainty.

“Last year, during the regional bank crisis in March, Bitcoin shot up 40% as the KRE, the regional bank index, was imploding. And here again, the regional bank index is acting up, and after a little bit of a correction after 11 ETFs were introduced, we are seeing Bitcoin catch a bid again. 

So this idea that it’s a flight to quality or a flight to safety is really asserting itself here. The reason we believe Bitcoin went down after the ETFs were introduced is because there was a lot of anticipatory buying before the ETFs came out. There was a bit of ‘sell-on-the-news’, these are the trading types who just are very opportunistic in that way.”

Wood shares a chart of Bitcoin priced in gold, which appears to show a strong, long term uptrend. She says it reflects that BTC is now in the process of partially replacing the yellow metal.

“This chart just shows you that even relative to gold, Bitcoin has been rising. There’s now a substitution into Bitcoin and we think that is going to continue now that there is a much easier way, less friction-filled way to access Bitcoin.”