Cathie Wood: The Institutions Are Buying (And How To Position)

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]Matthew, I think now looking back at that time, a lot of the kind of common school of thought was this is going to get adopted by the world's largest asset managers, institutions. It's going to be, you know, a lot of the rhetoric was like, oh, the institutions are going to come and buy Bitcoin from us, right?

[00:00:18]Like we are, you know, finally in something before kind of the the typical Wall Street out back here, right? And like that was a lot of the rhetoric. And now it's 2026. We are seeing ETFs, we are seeing stablecoin adoption, we are seeing tokenized assets, we are seeing this absolute explosion of permission blockchains, of largest institutions in the world launching POCs, actual products, stablecoins, etc. And really like this the convergence that we spoke about at large in the beginning around all these different sectors, it the main one in digital assets is the institutional adoption kind of collaborating with this crypto culture and all of the products and infrastructure that the industry has built over the last 5 8 years, you know, post Ethereum really. I'm curious what your current lay of the land is on this adoption from the institutional perspective as it correlates to the kind of interesting sentiment on the ground within the industry. There's a lot of apathy, there's a lot of kind of almost like internal disappointment from the inside, the crypto natives, the people who are supposed to be the believers. Meanwhile, a lot of the kind of more newer adopters from larger sectors, larger firms are more are just frankly more bullish.

[00:01:41]Right, you being one of them. Why is this happening and kind of what is your read on the state of adoption as this industry has kind of grown up and matured?

[00:01:51]Well, I think there are a few things going on right now.

[00:01:55]>> [clears throat] >> And and it was interesting. So, I gave I we took our first position in 2015 and uh we we were uh really we were made fun of back then. I bet. Uh I I you may or may not have been around and in the industry at that time, but uh you know, many people thought this was just a a marketing gimmick. And that's when I really knew that wait a minute, we might be on to something big here. When that many people make fun of you or just dismiss, it's a lot of it was dismissive. Um >> [clears throat] >> that makes me even more interested in it in a technology.

[00:02:37]And so, we have a global monetary system uh that really is Bitcoin. Bitcoin owns that space. Uh DeFi, so so Ethereum, Solana, um uh uh I think they they are running with that space. Hyperliquid uh giving them a bit of a challenge as well. Um the institutional interest, I think we needed Larry Fink actually to change his mind because >> he was saying uh he was the leader of the pack almost and it was interesting that that the leader of the largest asset management firm in the world um was uh making it his business to dismiss uh Bitcoin. But his conversion was so extreme uh and and his conversion had to do with a vision and and imagining the tokenization of everything. Finally understanding that wait a minute, uh you know, the the the internet was not built with a financial layer.

[00:03:52]And because nobody understood that commerce uh and investing uh would take place on it uh in the early days. It was just information exchange. Some people thought it was just for gambling and and other illicit activity as as much of innovation um gets accused of that in its early days.

[00:04:18]Uh and and so uh I think that he his opening his eyes to future tokenization of everything um was really important for uh the institutional uh investor and product development specialists to begin to imagine participating in this new age. Uh so I give him a lot of credit for that. At first uh we were battling uh him and Jamie Dimon and uh but then when his conversion took place, it gave the industry permission to say, "Wait a minute, if I don't get on board here, I might lose out. If he's saying this is important." And of course uh BlackRock uh has something called Aladdin, which is a uh a technology platform for asset managers. Well, if he's saying it's important, then I better learn something about it. Uh And and so now yes, and I also critical critical critical to uh DeFi was the evolution of stable coins. Um we just did a podcast with uh the founder of Binance, CZ, yesterday. Uh and both of us agree that the biggest surprise to us from the early days of Bitcoin uh to now was uh the evolution of stable coins backed by fiat.

[00:05:47]Uh that also was quite anathema to sort of the the crypto ecosystem in its early days, but now you see the Bitcoin OGs fully supportive. I mean, Giancarlo and Paolo at Tether hugely supportive, obviously, of stable coins, but they were from a from an OG point of view one of the first two. And so I think they've brought the world along into this concept of stable coins, which is the bridge from DeFi in I mean from TradFi into DeFi importantly. We thought Bitcoin was going to serve the roles that stable coins do now. And certainly in emerging markets, but even in emerging markets they you know, the Bitcoin community considers stable coins humanitarian kind of stepping stone into the the crypto world.

[00:06:54]Humanitarian in that most people in emerging markets cannot withstand the volatility of Bitcoin and other crypto assets for their day-to-day living. You know, they're hand-to-mouth. As wealth grows, and we agree with this as well, they will move from stable coins into more into more investments within the crypto ecosystem. So I think that's the other big surprise and and has become the glide path for DeFi.

[00:07:32]And and and so the big question there is for us, and we're trying to noodle it through with CZ yesterday, you know, is this a winner-take-most world the stable coin world and the network effect would suggest yes and I think the delays in the genius act and the clarity act have given tether and circle USDT and USDC really more running room to enjoy the network effect so ironically regulations which should spur more stable coins have the delay in those regulations have allowed for more of the network effect than otherwise might have happened CZ thinks there's going to be a proliferation of stable coins and and our team does as well Lorenzo David and Ray here at Arc they they do believe there's going to be an explosion in stable coins whether or not that happens I think everyone believes there will be consolidation and again based on the network effect to just a chosen few