대화 「우드 자매」 캐시 우드: 다음 강세장이 다가온다

Compiled & Edited: Odaily TechFlow

Guest: Cathie Wood, CEO & CIO of ARK Invest

Host: Robbie

Podcast Source: The Rollup

Original Title: Cathie Wood: The Next Bull Market Is Here

Airdate: April 28, 2026

Editor's Introduction

Cathie Wood, founder of ARK Invest, recently appeared on The Rollup. In the interview, she gave clear Bitcoin price predictions: $730,000 in the base case scenario by 2030, and $1.5 million in the bull case scenario. She believes we are currently in a bottoming phase, with on-chain analysis suggesting an absolute bottom between $50,000 and $55,000. She also presented a macro thesis overlooked by the market: AI training costs are dropping 75% annually, and inference costs are declining 85%-95% annually, triggering a wave of "good deflation." Trueflation, a real-time blockchain-based inflation indicator, shows core inflation has fallen to 1.3%, suggesting the Fed will likely be forced to pivot towards easing, acting as a catalyst for the next wave of digital asset activity. Additionally, she revealed that ARK's crypto research team has used Claude Co-work to cut quarterly report production time by 75%, and believes that the payment layer for Agentic AI will inevitably be built on the blockchain.

Key Quotes

Bitcoin Pricing & Cycle Judgment

• "Our base case is that Bitcoin will reach $730,000 by 2030, and $1.5 million in the bull case."
• "A 50% drop is not a bear market. Compared to past drops of 85% or 95%, this is child's play."
• "Our on-chain analyst David Puell says the absolute bottom is between $50,000 and $55,000. But I doubt we'll get there."
• "The correlation coefficient between gold and Bitcoin is only 0.14. In the last two cycles, gold moved before Bitcoin, and it's happening again this time."

Stablecoin & DeFi Evolution

• "CZ and I both agree that from the early days of Bitcoin until now, the biggest surprise has been the rise of stablecoins."
• "Ironically, the delay of the CLARITY Act has given Tether and Circle more time to enjoy network effects."
• "We originally thought Bitcoin would play the role stablecoins now fill, especially in emerging markets. But stablecoins became the bridge from traditional finance into DeFi."

Institutional Adoption Turning Point

• "Larry Fink's transformation is complete. He finally understands that the internet never had a financial layer, and tokenization can fill that gap. His pivot gave permission to the entire industry. If he says it's important, I better go learn about it too."
• "We were ridiculed when we first bought Bitcoin in 2015. Many thought it was just a marketing gimmick. That collective scorn actually made me more confident we were onto something."

Macro & Deflation Logic

• "The federal funds rate has already been cut by 175 basis points, but the market narrative still says the Fed is too hawkish."
• "AI training costs are dropping 75% annually, inference costs are dropping 85% to 95% annually. We're going to see a massive wave of beneficial deflation."

Convergence of Agentic AI & Blockchain

• "In the future, we'll have a bunch of chatbots working for us. We'll need to pay Claude, pay robots that provide us data. It's all machine-to-machine, and a blockchain-based payment system is the only reasonable infrastructure."
• "Our crypto team uses Claude Co-work for quarterly reports, cutting production time by 75%. All that saved time is being freed up for deep research."

ARK's Five Innovation Platforms Thesis

Robbie: You have five innovation platforms, which give rise to 15 technologies, and now these technologies are converging. Before we dive into digital assets and public chains, can you give us a macro perspective on how you view the topic of disruptive innovation?

Cathie Wood: The seeds of everything we see today were planted early in my career. I watched them being sown in the 80s and 90s. But cloud computing didn't really arrive until AWS launched in 2006. Back then, I tried explaining cloud computing to investors and advisors, and it sounded like science fiction to them. The big breakthrough in AI came with deep learning in 2012 and the Transformer architecture in 2017, which later led to ChatGPT and natural language programming.

In the late 90s, too much capital was chasing too few opportunities, and it was too early. Today, the situation is completely reversed: the five innovation platforms and 15 technologies are all ready, yet investors are filled with fear. As a fund manager, I prefer operating in this environment over the crazy bubble period back then.

Today's valuations are much lower than during the bubble era, the technology is ready, and crucially, the cost decline is astonishing, meaning these technologies can reach more industries and individuals.

When I founded ARK in 2014, institutional investors had become extremely risk-averse after the internet bubble burst and the 2008 financial crisis. The whole industry shifted towards passive investing, fueling the ETF boom. Even in active management, fund managers relied heavily on benchmark indices for stock selection. We don't do that; our screening criteria is original research.

Traditional finance research teams are organized by industry, like five consumer analysts, five healthcare analysts, etc. But we believe that to understand innovation correctly, the research team must be structured around those 15 technologies because these technologies cut across all industries.

Robbie: Why are investors so scared? Is it because they haven't figured out the organizational structure to understand this technological convergence?

Cathie Wood: This convergence is indeed confusing. Tesla is the perfect example. Most research directors assigned Tesla to an auto analyst, but it should have been assigned to at least a tech analyst, or more accurately, to a collaborative team of three: a robotics analyst, an energy storage analyst, and an AI analyst. Assigning it to experts on internal combustion engines and manual driving cars is the wrong direction. We are moving from the old world to electrification and autonomous driving.

AI is developing so fast, impacting so many industries simultaneously, that it's a shock experience in itself. Research directors need time to figure out how to reorganize. They need to allocate people by technology domain while building a collaborative culture. In traditional institutions, if a stock is assigned to an auto analyst, no one else can touch it. This model must change because technologies are converging, and analysts must collaborate to understand the potential of these companies.

Crypto Asset Allocation Logic

Robbie: We also see a lot of tribalism in the crypto industry. The digital asset story clearly starts with Bitcoin. When you founded ARK in 2014, Bitcoin was still finding its footing. How did you view Bitcoin back then? Was it already suitable for institutional allocation?

Cathie Wood: Not at that time. Actually, I started paying attention to and discussing Bitcoin at my previous company, purely out of curiosity. I brought the analyst who was most obsessed with Bitcoin to ARK. That's our current Chief Futurist, Brett Winton.

When I founded ARK in 2014, we only had four innovation platforms, merging AI and blockchain into a category called "Next Generation Internet." That's also where our fund name ARK comes from. At the time, AI had just broken through with deep learning and was still very new. Blockchain excited us more, but we weren't sure if it deserved its own category.

In 2015, we collaborated with Art Laffer, the originator of the Laffer Curve and a monetary economist who studied under Nobel laureate Robert Mundell, to release our first Bitcoin white paper. The core question was: Can Bitcoin fulfill the three functions of money: medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account?

Art told me something then: "This is what I've been waiting for since the US closed the gold window in 1971." I asked him how big this idea was. He countered, "What's the size of the US monetary base?" It was $4.5 trillion at the time. Bitcoin's network value was only $6 billion. He was talking about trillions. I immediately made a personal investment.

We sought the best exposure for our clients and needed permission from the NYSE and SEC. We ultimately found GBTC (Grayscale Bitcoin Trust). Bitcoin was $250 then. In the summer of 2015, when Greece threatened to leave the EU, we built our first position. We noticed that whenever such geopolitical news broke, Bitcoin went up. It can act as both a risk-on asset and a safe haven, playing different roles at different times.

Robbie: Looking back at that era, the mainstream narrative was "institutions are coming to buy our Bitcoin." Now, in 2026, we've seen ETF adoption, stablecoin adoption, tokenized assets, the explosion of permissioned chains, and major institutions launching real products. The adoption by traditional institutions combined with native crypto culture and infrastructure is the biggest convergence in the digital asset space.

But an interesting phenomenon is: crypto natives, those who should have the most conviction, are now pervaded by a sense of apathy and internal disappointment. Yet the new big institutions and large companies entering the space are more bullish. How do you interpret this state?

Cathie Wood: Several things are happening simultaneously. When we bought Bitcoin in 2015, we were genuinely ridiculed. Many thought it was a marketing gimmick. When that many people mock or dismiss you, it makes me even more interested.

The current landscape is like this: Bitcoin owns the global monetary system赛道. In DeFi, Ethereum and Solana are dominant, and Hyperliquid (a decentralized perpetual contract exchange) is also shaping the landscape.

Regarding institutional adoption, I believe Larry Fink's transformation was a key turning point. He was once a leading Bitcoin critic, but his transformation has been extremely thorough. His change stems from a vision: the tokenization of everything. He finally understood that the internet was built without a financial layer because no one back then imagined e-commerce or online investing. It was initially just information exchange; some even thought it was just for gambling or illegal activities.

Fink's awakening gave permission to the entire industry. Before, we felt we were fighting against him and Jamie Dimon (CEO of JPMorgan Chase). But after Fink changed, the industry's reaction was, if he says this is important, we need to learn quickly too. Moreover, BlackRock has Aladdin (a technology platform serving the asset management industry). If Fink says tokenization is important, then all asset management firms using Aladdin have to follow suit.

Another development crucial for DeFi is the evolution of stablecoins. I just did a podcast with CZ (Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance) yesterday. We agreed that from the early days of Bitcoin until now, the biggest surprise has been the rise of fiat-backed stablecoins. This was quite heretical in the early crypto ecosystem. But now even Bitcoin OGs fully support it. Giancarlo and Paolo from Tether were among the earliest OGs.

Stablecoins became the bridge from traditional finance into DeFi. We initially thought Bitcoin would play this role, especially in emerging markets. But even in emerging markets, the Bitcoin community views stablecoins as a humanitarian "on-ramp" into the crypto world, because most residents in emerging markets can't handle Bitcoin's volatility; they live on their daily income. Once their wealth grows, they naturally transition from stablecoins to more investment options within the crypto ecosystem.

There's another big question: Will stablecoins be a winner-take-all market? Network effects suggest so. Ironically, the delay of the CLARITY Act has given Tether and Circle more time to build network effects. CZ believes there will be an explosion of stablecoins, and our team, Lorenzo, David, and Ray, think so too. But regardless of whether an explosion happens, everyone believes it will eventually consolidate to a few winners.

Why Tokenization is the Core Narrative

Robbie: We've been discussing on the show that the tokenization wave starts with non-speculative assets, moves along the risk curve to treasuries, and now we're discussing tokenized equities. In your Big Ideas 2026 report, you wrote that the global market for tokenized assets could surpass $11 trillion by 2030. My question is, as these assets come on-chain, will they eventually find their way into DeFi protocols? Where do you think the primary value accrues?

Cathie Wood: We tend to agree with your view. A differentiation typically occurs in innovative fields: pure-play new entrants are faster, more agile, and more creative; traditional players embrace new technology to lower costs, improve efficiency, and increase productivity. Within the traditional camp, the most aggressive and visionary companies use this to consolidate their traditional markets.

The best examples are Walmart and Amazon. During the internet bubble, everyone thought traditional retail would be destroyed. Many boutique stores were indeed eliminated, but Walmart used the internet to build its online business (acquiring Jet.com) and instead consolidated the traditional retail space. Amazon is the fast-growing giant, but both coexist. Now, Walmart is actually more aggressive in drone delivery than Amazon because it has better relationships with its partner companies and regulators. Amazon was generations ahead of Walmart in drone technology but made some regulatory missteps that slowed them down.

The crypto world is similar. Traditional players are embracing this technology. JPMorgan is particularly interesting. Jamie Dimon remains, in many ways, one of the biggest Bitcoin skeptics, but he lets his technology team and client demand override his personal judgment.

On the pure-play DeFi side, we are betting on Ethereum, Solana, and Hyperliquid. We bought some DATs (Digital Asset Tokens) for our ETF, including Bitmine Immersion and Soulmate from the Solana ecosystem. We know that too many DATs were created, so a massive shakeout is inevitable. We publish our trades daily; you can see us gradually adding back positions while shifting towards pure exposure to Ethereum and Solana within allowed limits. Some platform providers don't allow the flagship fund to hold Bitcoin ETFs or Ethereum/Solana ETFs, so we have to operate within those restrictions.

DeFi will experience explosive growth. The allocation of economic value between Layer 1 and Layer 2 is still being contested, and we're watching closely. But we still favor the "Big Four," and now with WBTC able to migrate to other platforms, Bitcoin can be included too.

"Beneficial Deflation" and the Current Macro Liquidity Situation

Robbie: People will say they've heard Cathie is long-term bullish. But we are in a period of geopolitical turmoil. Stocks hit new highs yesterday, while Bitcoin is still hovering around $75,000. Raoul Pal tweeted that global liquidity is rising. How do you view the lag of the crypto market relative to stocks and commodities? What is your macro liquidity assessment?

Cathie Wood: I wrote a letter at the beginning of the year that included an asset class correlation matrix. Many people think