Cathie Wood makes her first crypto trade of 2026

I’ve been covering crypto markets for agelong capable to retrieve erstwhile Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood’s involvement successful Bitcoin (BTC) was treated with backlash.

In a 2018 enactment published connected ARK Invest (written by Cathie Wood), she said ARK was the archetypal nationalist plus manager to summation Bitcoin vulnerability (via Grayscale’s Bitcoin Investment Trust/GBTC) and that the determination prompted “a fig of questions and overmuch ridicule” successful September 2015.

The skepticism wasn’t needfully a immense personal attack, but professionals astatine the clip often questioned the seriousness of crypto arsenic an investable plus and viewed specified aboriginal bets by a traditionally equity-focused store arsenic risky oregon gimmicky.

Related: Cathie Wood buys $11M of sinking crypto banal again

This was earlier exchange-traded funds (ETFs), earlier organization custody, earlier the SEC had a dedicated enforcement portion focused connected integer assets. It was besides earlier crypto became a governmental issue, a argumentation debate, oregon a regular diagnostic successful net calls.

Back then, Wood was already talking astir Bitcoin arsenic portion of a broader technological shift. Not arsenic a trade. Not arsenic a hedge. As infrastructure.

Wood has played a agelong crippled successful crypto. And she’s done it done periods erstwhile being publically bullish came with existent nonrecreational risk.

ARK Invest archetypal explored Bitcoin vulnerability successful 2015. At the time, Bitcoin traded person to $200. There was nary spot ETF, nary regulated futures marketplace with meaningful liquidity, and nary statement that the plus would past regulatory scrutiny.

Wood has since explained conscionable however constrained that aboriginal vulnerability was.

“We had to inquire the New York Stock Exchange support to enactment it in,” she said, adding that ARK was constricted to a 1% allocation.

That’s hard to quadrate with today’s environment, wherever Bitcoin ETFs commercialized billions of dollars a time and crypto is discussed openly by pension funds, insurers and sovereign wealthiness managers. But it’s an important reminder. Wood’s involvement successful crypto didn’t statesman erstwhile it became institutionally acceptable. It began good earlier that.

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Wood’s nationalist comments astir Bitcoin person been remarkably accordant implicit the years.

She has emphasized proviso certainty, planetary accessibility and debased correlation with accepted assets. She has argued that Bitcoin functions otherwise from equities and commodities due to the fact that it is governed by codification alternatively than policy.