Star portfolio manager Cathie Wood of Ark Invest just trimmed her long-range Bitcoin (BTC 2.37%) price forecast on Nov. 6, and not by a trivial amount. Now, she sees the coin's price going to $1.2 million between now and 2030, down from her prior estimate that called for it to reach $1.5 million in the same time frame.
So what prompted this decision, and what does it mean for holders?
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Why Wood clipped the upside estimate
Wood primarily cut her estimate for Bitcoin's price because she saw stablecoins gaining ground for day-to-day payments, thereby reducing the need for Bitcoin. By her logic, the growth of stablecoins narrows one lane of Bitcoin's total addressable market (TAM). But that doesn't touch the coin's store-of-value thesis, which is where most long-term investors actually park their conviction, which we'll get to in a minute.
For the record, Ark Invest had previously published the $1.5 million figure in its Big Ideas 2025 workup in late April 2025. Thus the investment thesis update is incremental here, not a total about-face. Wood still obviously expects dramatically higher value for Bitcoin in the future.
CRYPTO: BTC
Key Data Points
To her point, yes, stablecoins are ascendant. Aggregate stablecoin capitalization reached the $305 billion neighborhood in early November 2025 as dollar-pegged tokens proliferated, and they will probably keep growing from here. Financial institutions now brief clients on stablecoin use cases as part of the standard fintech modernization suite, and that probably won't change.
But payments utility is not the core of Bitcoin's investment thesis. In fact, it's largely gone by the wayside compared to other pillars that the asset's evangelists now tout, like its scarcity and its inability to be printed at the will of politicians as fiat currency is. In other words, Bitcoin's base case for growth rests on its scarcity-driven digital gold dynamics, not the promise of using it to buy a cup of coffee at a cafe, which is a use case it's poorly positioned for anyway.
A thriving stablecoin sector can coexist with, and even complement, Bitcoin's value by onboarding capital into crypto rails and normalizing digital asset custody overall. The price target cut is a recognition that one slice of usage is consolidating elsewhere, which was something that was largely inevitable.
What investors should do with this information
For long-term investors, the only question here is whether Bitcoin's store-of-value pathway is weakening.
The opposite appears to be more plausible. Mainstream access to buying the asset has never been simpler. Spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) allow investors to get exposure to Bitcoin inside ordinary brokerage accounts -- no crypto wallets required -- and so they've attracted tens of billions in net inflows this year alone. Furthermore, ETF enthusiasm is rising broadly across the investor base, which supports persistent allocations to simple investments.
That means the digital gold use case is getting structurally easier while the payments use case migrates to stablecoins because they're vastly more efficient at the task. Framed that way, Wood's revision says more about stablecoins' success than a deterioration in Bitcoin's investment case.
There is one key risk that Wood's target cut speaks to, however. If stablecoins cannibalize Bitcoin's role as a reserve asset on corporate balance sheets, that could limit upside potential. Conversely, if ETF demand compounds and more financial institutions hold Bitcoin as a treasury reserve, the store-of-value premium could outgrow any addressable market lost to stable payments.
In closing, Bitcoin still looks set for compound growth over time, especially now that it can be bought and held through ETFs; its loss of the payments market isn't something to be too concerned about. If you believe in that separation of roles, Wood's target tweak is not a reason to sell so much as it is a reminder to buy and hold the coin for the right reason.
