Stablecoins are becoming increasingly mainstream, with big banks and companies wanting to issue them.
Outspoken Bitcoin investor Cathie Wood said Thursday that she’s becoming less bullish on the leading cryptocurrency’s price prospects because of how useful stablecoins are proving to be.
The CEO and CIO of Ark Invest said in an interview with CNBC that instead of giving Bitcoin a bullish price target of $1.5 million per coin by 2030, she now expects it to hit $1.2 million by that year. While still a sizable increase from Bitcoin’s current price, that’s a substantial cut from the previous target.
Wood said that stablecoins are increasingly being used instead of Bitcoin to make payments, and are scaling faster than the biggest and oldest cryptocurrency.
“Stablecoins are usurping part of the role we thought Bitcoin would play,” she said. “Given what’s happening to stablecoins — serving emerging markets in the way we thought Bitcoin would — I think we could take $300,000 off of that bullish case [for Bitcoin].”
Stablecoins are digital tokens running on blockchains — like Ethereum or Solana — that are pegged to non-volatile assets, usually dollars. With a stable value, such cryptocurrencies were first primarily used by traders to enter and exit digital asset trades without the need for banks.
They have since been adopted by tech-savvy people in countries with weak currencies as a way to get exposure to the US dollar or send money.
And now, top banks, major companies like Meta and Amazon and even U.S. states are interested in issuing the tokens, which are supposed to accelerate payments leveraging blockchain infrastructure.
U.S. President Donald Trump in July signed the GENIUS Act into law, establishing a framework for issuing and trading stablecoins in the U.S.
Wood added that Bitcoin could still grow monumentally as an asset and usurp half of the gold market as investors increasingly see it a digital version of the precious metal. Some Bitcoin proponents have sold the asset as a long-term store of value, or digital gold.
Some hardcore Bitcoiners — known as “maximalists” — say the cryptocurrency will eventually be used as a medium of exchange, though the debate over Bitcoin’s worth as spending money has been contentious at times.
“I think the whole [crypto] space gets bigger,” she added. “We have a long way to go.”
Bitcoin’s price recently stood at $101,775, according to CoinGecko, down over 19% from its October all-time high of $126,080. The price of the top asset dipped below the $100,000 mark earlier this week for the first time in six months, reflecting macroeconomic turmoil, liquidity concerns, and other potential factors in play.
Just this week, institutional crypto firm Galaxy cut its own Bitcoin price target for this year, slashing it from $185,000 to $120,000 citing a new “maturity era” for the asset marked by institutional interest and lower volatility.
