Cathie Wood urges investors to swap gold for Bitcoin

Wednesday 04 February 2026 - 14:20

By: Dakir Madiha

Cathie Wood urges investors to swap gold for Bitcoin

Cathie Wood, CEO of ARK Invest, is advising investors to abandon gold in favor of Bitcoin. She argues that the precious metal has reached extreme valuation levels not seen since the Great Depression.

In a recent podcast appearance, Wood stated that as an aggressive investor, she would "consider switching from gold to Bitcoin right now." This comes as gold trades near $4,700 per ounce, up about 55 percent over the past year, while Bitcoin has dipped roughly 6 percent.

Wood bases her view on a metric comparing gold's market capitalization to the U.S. M2 money supply. ARK's analysis shows this ratio hitting 150 to 170 percent—levels matched only during the 1930s Great Depression and the 1980 peak inflation.

"The current macroeconomic environment is very different," Wood noted, pointing to ongoing monetary expansion, stable growth, and abundant liquidity. She described gold as priced for a worst-case scenario and entering a phase of "irrational exuberance" primed for correction.

Bitcoin, by contrast, remains in an early stage. Wood reaffirmed her bullish price target of $1.5 million by 2030, citing its fixed supply schedule that offers asymmetric upside potential unmatched by gold.

She linked Bitcoin's recent struggles partly to fallout from the October 10, 2025, flash crash. In a separate interview, Wood estimated it triggered $28 billion in cryptocurrency ecosystem liquidations, with effects still rippling through the system.

That event obliterated over $19 billion in leveraged positions within hours, driven by trade war headlines. It set the record for the largest single-day crypto liquidation, with Bitcoin dropping 14 percent from around $122,000 to $105,000. Some altcoins briefly traded near zero.

Binance, at the epicenter, issued a report blaming the crash on macroeconomic shocks colliding with excessive leverage, not platform failures though it compensated users with over $328 million.

Wood highlights Bitcoin's structural edges, including a 0.14 correlation with gold since 2020 and an issuance rate of about 0.82 percent annually, set to halve further. Unlike gold, where miners ramp up production on price surges, Bitcoin's supply is mathematically capped.

She also points to intergenerational wealth transfer dynamics favoring crypto, as younger investors lean toward digital assets.

ARK put conviction into action on Monday, buying over $44 million in crypto-related stocks: $21 million in Robinhood, $9.4 million in Circle, plus stakes in Coinbase and others. This occurred as the Crypto Fear & Greed Index signaled "extreme fear."