Cathie Wood sends blunt message after Bitcoin crashes
Anand Sinha
Sat, January 31, 2026 at 6:10 PM EST
4 min read
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Every time the crypto market enters a dramatic phase, ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood is one of the first investors I turn to in order to understand the changing dynamics on the charts.
Wood is a veteran investor in the digital assets market. In fact, she claimed that ARK Invest was the first public asset manager to gain Bitcoin (BTC) exposure in 2015.
Related: Bitcoin crashes below $80K again as investors panic
Bitcoin hadn't reached even the $500 price mark in 2015, but it was a significant uptick since its launch in 2009. But Wood's pro-crypto move was met with sharp criticism.
However, the confidence seems to have paid off over the years as Bitcoin kept hitting new highs. ARK Invest estimates the cryptocurrency's price will hit $1 million in 2030.
Wood also keeps buying shares of crypto companies such as:
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Coinbase (Nasdaq: COIN), the largest crypto exchange in the U.S.
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Robinhood Markets (Nasdaq: HOOD), an e-trading platform with crypto and tokenized stock offerings
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Block (NYSE: SQ), Jack Dorsey's Bitcoin technology company
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Bitmine Immersion Technologies (NYSE: BMNR), the world's largest Ethereum (ETH) treasury company
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Bullish (NYSE: BLSH), the crypto exchange backed by Peter Thiel
Cathie Wood responds to Bitcoin crash
Given Wood's deep expertise in crypto investments, it is worth understanding her perspective in the wake of Bitcoin's crash below $80,000 on Jan. 31.
Lorenzo Valente, ARK Invest's Director of Research, Digital Assets, recently shared an analysis in which he compared gold's market cap as a percentage of the U.S. M2 money supply.
M2 is a broad measure of the U.S. money supply (cash, checking, savings, money market funds).
As per the analysis, gold's market cap is 170% of the entire U.S. money supply right now.
The figure is an all-time high (ATH); in fact, it is as high as it was in 1934 during the Great Depression and only slightly above the figure in 1980 when inflation peaked, the chart showed.
In simple words, gold is as expensive as it can be. Such peaks usually happen during periods of economic stress and dollar regime shift and often mark turning points, Valente said. For instance, gold crashed 60% after 1980.
Even right now, it feels like a "pivot moment" and while nobody knows what happens next, those who know can make huge gains, he added.
When ARK Invest shared its 2026 outlook on Jan. 15, the asset manager noted that the correlation between the Bitcoin and gold prices has been very low at 0.14 since early 2020.
This is exactly what Wood reiterated in response to Valente's X post. In simple terms, Bitcoin and gold usually don't move together on a daily or monthly basis.
Story Continues
But the veteran investor underlined that even though Bitcoin and gold prices don't sync often, the gold rally was followed by the Bitcoin rally during the last two major bull runs.
More News:
Bitcoin fails to leverage 'debasement trade's narrative
The “debasement trade” is an idea that assets like Bitcoin and precious metals should surge when the dollar weakens, as these assets act as a hedge against currency erosion.
It was expected that Bitcoin would take advantage of the "debasement trade" narrative, given the decline in the U.S. dollar's value over the last months. But it didn't happen at all.
As gold and silver had been hitting record high prices over the last few weeks, Bitcoin didn't offer any meaningful response.
When the precious metals witnessed a sharp reversal over the weekend, the crypto market expected capital to rotate into Bitcoin, but nothing of that sort happened.
Gold's price hit an ATH of $5,594.82 per ounce on Jan. 30 but crashed over the weekend. It was exchanging hands at $4,893.2 per oz at press time.
On the other hand, Bitcoin still hadn't been able to recover from the flash crash on Oct. 10, 2025, and it went on to hit its lowest point since April 2025.
In fact, BTC has fallen 7.5% in the last 24 hours to trade at $77,730.64 at the time of writing.
The king coin's current price is more than 35% lower than the ATH of $126,080 it hit on Oct. 6, 2025.
Meanwhile, the total crypto market cap has declined 7% in 24 hours to $2.7 trillion at press time.
Related: 157-year-old bank warns U.S. dollar is 'overvalued'
This story was originally published by TheStreet on Jan 31, 2026, where it first appeared in the MARKETS section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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