Cathie Wood, founder and CEO of Ark Invest, screenshot from Ark Invest video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWgQpih9yus
ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood is optimistic about the potential convergence of Bitcoin and artificial intelligence, saying in a recent tweet that the synergy “could transform the way companies organize, causing a collapse in costs and an explosion in productivity.”
In an Aug. 21 research document, ARK Invest suggested that its founder, Wood, and ARK are assessing the significance of AI in their investment strategies.
Based in St. Petersburg, Florida, Ark manages several exchange-traded funds, including a Bitcoin ETF and other digital asset-related investments including substantial holdings in crypto exchanges Coinbase and Robinhood.
Wood said in a new video update posted on YouTube that the convergence of Bitcoin and AI could make payments systems drastically more efficient, eliminating unnecessary taxes spent on card-based transactions, Daily Hodl reported.
“One of the biggest opportunities out there is to eliminate a tax on all purchases done through the traditional financial system. There’s a tax on those, unless you’re using cash, and the tax is somewhere between 2.5% and 4%. That’s a pretty big tax in terms of using debit and credit cards and other intermediaries – these intermediaries are going to be disintermediated by the convergence between Bitcoin and artificial intelligence.”
In its Aug. 21 research document, Ark acknowledged that the principal risks of investing in ARK Funds include the fact that Bitcoin operates as a decentralized, peer-to-peer financial exchange and cryptocurrencies experience very high volatility. Governments may restrict the use and exchange of crypto, and U.S. regulations are still pending, Ark warned. Cryptocurrency exchanges may stop operating or permanently shut down due to fraud, technical glitches, hackers or malware.
ARK predicted that chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT will become efficient enough to disrupt marquee online marketplaces, including Apple’s App Store and Google’s search engine.
“Our research suggests that AI could disrupt the once reliable, cash-cow businesses of large market incumbents. OpenAI’s ChatGPT could threaten Apple and Alphabet by disrupting the App Store and Google Search, respectively. OpenAI’s product plugins for ChatGPT enable chatbots to interact with external data and services: they can search for real-time information on the web, order groceries from local stores, and book flights, hotels, or rental cars at the lowest prices anywhere in the world… According to our research, artificial intelligence software could boost the productivity of knowledge workers roughly four-fold globally by 2030. On a knowledge worker wage base of $32 trillion, global productivity could lower costs by nearly half.”
Wood is well known for being enthusiastic about Bitocin and has invested in “various AI-related stocks, demonstrating her strong belief in the rising technology,” Cointelegraph reported.
“Tech’s center of gravity is shifting dramatically,” wrote Thomas Hartmann-Boyce, ARK’s client portfolio manager; Frank Downing, director of research; and Daniel White, associate portfolio manager. “Large language models are presenting super-exponential growth opportunities that could leave mega-cap tech companies flat-footed.”
In a tweet, Wood said she was “blown away by the possibilities these brilliant entrepreneurs are creating” at the intersection of Bitcoin and AI.
