Cathie Wood is famous for her predictions. Her Ark Innovation ETF has invested in some of the highest-growth businesses on the planet, largely based on where she believes the world is headed over the long term. She's a big believer in cryptocurrencies, and has a $1.5 million price target on one particular crypto asset.
CRYPTO: BTC
Key Data Points
Cathie Wood loves this old-school cryptocurrency
The crypto industry is used to outlandish claims about what the future holds. Back in 2022, Wood was fully on the hype train. "Bitcoin is truly a money revolution," she said.
At the time, the price of Bitcoin (BTC +0.02%) was between $15,000 and $20,000 following the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. She predicted Bitcoin's price could reach $1.3 million by the end of 2023. While that didn't happen, Bitcoin's price did rise considerably.
At the close of 2023, Bitcoin's price was above $40,000. So while Wood wasn't correct in the magnitude, she certainly nailed the general trajectory of Bitcoin's value.
This is what makes Wood's recent predictions so intriguing. Earlier this year, she predicted that Bitcoin's price would reach $1.5 million by the end of 2030. That's roughly 2,700% higher than today's price range of about $54,000. But she's not finished just yet. That price target doesn't include potential upside from higher-than-expected institutional involvement.
"We put our bull case for Bitcoin at $1.5 million," she told Investor's Business Daily. But if institutional investors allocated about 5% of their portfolios to Bitcoin, she added, "that alone would add $2.3 million to the projection I just gave you."
How much upside does Bitcoin really have?
Wood isn't the only one who believes Bitcoin has huge long-term upside, even if her near-term price targets haven't played out very accurately. Venture capitalist Tim Draper -- who famously invested in Twitter, Coinbase, Tesla, SpaceX, Ring, and Cylance -- predicted in 2018 that Bitcoin would reach "$250,000 by 2022."
Bitcoin's price didn't test those highs that year. But between 2018 and 2022, its value did rise by roughly 1,000%. Like Wood, Draper's trajectory was correct -- just not the magnitude.
Similar to Wood, Draper is still a huge long-term Bitcoin bull. In a recent interview, Draper defended his previous $250,000 price target. "When I predicted that, what I didn't expect was how fearful and just old thinking the U.S. would be," he said in response to lower-than-expected uptake from institutional investors. "I would say that my number $250,000 will probably come pretty soon, so I'll stick with $250,000. I actually think that if it hits $250,000, it'll go way past it."
Over the short term, it's anyone's guess where Bitcoin's price is headed next. Long term, however, we do have some guidelines on how much potential upside there could be.
Right now, Bitcoin's total market cap is about $1.2 trillion. Gold -- an asset that shares many of Bitcoin's store of value characteristics -- has a market value of more than $15 trillion. Despite Wood and Draper's lofty predictions, their long-term price targets still put Bitcoin's valuation at or below that of gold. And while gold does have some industrial-use cases, Bitcoin's role in the expanding crypto ecosystem could ultimately give it more utility than any previous metal.
Bitcoin bulls have every reason to be optimistic. But as history has proven, volatility will be the norm. Make sure to remain patient, taking outlandish predictions for what they really are: signals of general confidence, not reliable measures of pinpoint accuracy.
