Cathie Wood :"Bitcoin Will Hit $1.5 Million By This Date" (Latest Bitcoin Prediction)

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]Many people, because we call Bitcoin digital gold, they think, "Oh, well, surely it's highly correlated to gold."

[00:00:06]It is not. In fact, and we did the analysis from 2019, which is when real institutional interest started evolving a little more intensely. The correlation between gold and Bitcoin over that time has been 0.14.

[00:00:25]But, if you look at the last two cycles, you'll see that gold rallied [music] before Bitcoin did. And we think the same thing is happening now. And if you look at the longer term, you'll see higher lows in terms of the very long-term trend line.

[00:00:43]And so, we think that that the Bitcoin bull market is still intact. I realize we've been through what many would call a bear market. And yet, down 50% is a victory compared to down 85 or 95%.

[00:00:59]>> for ants, Cathie. Yes, [laughter] exactly. Exactly. So, you know, that is still intact. And we do believe that Bitcoin will will get to, you know, new all-time highs in this next cycle. Many people don't, but we do. And you know that we're on record saying that our base case for 2030 is 730,000. Our bull case is 1.5 million.

[00:01:26]>> I still think there is a decent chance that later this year Bitcoin will go back down.

[00:01:33]And and that yes, we are experiencing a rally that's lasting a while. But again, when you think about and I've seen people say that this one is is very different than prior rallies. But if you think about it, in 2018 Bitcoin set a low in February. The next low didn't occur until like very late June, early July.

[00:01:56]Cathie Wood of Ark Invest just said something that Wall Street does not want to sit with.

[00:02:01]Her base case for Bitcoin by 2030 is $730,000.

[00:02:06]Her bull case is $1.5 million. And and the argument she is making to back those numbers is not the one most people will agree with, especially with the current situation with Bitcoin.

[00:02:17]Here is what is actually going on. Gold ran from around $2,600 an ounce to $5,589 in roughly a year.

[00:02:27]Bitcoin hit $126,000 in October 2025 and has been sliding ever since.

[00:02:34]Most people looked at that and called it a crypto problem. Wood looks at it as a sequence.

[00:02:39]Because in the last two full cycles, that is exactly what happened.

[00:02:43]Gold moved first, then Bitcoin followed.

[00:02:46]And the correlation between the two assets going back to 2019 is just 0.14, meaning they barely move together. One leads, the other catches up.

[00:02:56]The question is, will Bitcoin still catch up or has it broken that pattern this time?

[00:03:01]Now, let's listen to Cathie Wood.

[00:03:04]I wrote a letter at the beginning of the year and in it you'll find a matrix of the correlations uh among asset classes and uh specifically trying to understand Bitcoin. Um >> [music] >> many people, because we call Bitcoin digital gold, they think, "Oh, well, surely it's highly correlated to gold."

[00:03:24]It is not. Uh in fact, and we did the analysis from 2019, um which is when real institutional interest started uh evolving uh >> [music] >> uh a little more intensely. Uh the correlation between gold and Bitcoin over that time has been 0.14.

[00:03:47]Uh but if you look at the last two cycles, you'll see that gold rallied [music] before Bitcoin did. And we think the same thing is happening now and we we monitor we monitor Bitcoin to gold and I feature it regularly in something called In the Know, which I do once a month.

[00:04:12]And on that chart, you'll see [music] yes, Bitcoin relative to gold has had a significant drop. But if you look at the longer term, you'll see higher lows in terms of the very long-term trend line.

[00:04:29]And so we think that the Bitcoin bull market is still intact. I realize we've been through what many would call a bear market and yet down 50% is a victory compared to down 85 or 95%.

[00:04:46]>> for ants, Cathy. Yes, exactly. Exactly.

[00:04:50]So, you know, that is still intact and we do believe that Bitcoin will [music] will get to you know, new all-time highs in this next cycle. Many people don't, but we do and you know that we're on record saying that our base case for 2030 is 730,000. Our bull case is 1.5 million.

[00:05:17]We took a a lot of flak for or I did for for saying that [music] stablecoins had usurped some of the role of Bitcoin, which is true. Certainly in emerging markets. [music] But what what people missed when I was making that statement [music] was that gold was rallying. So the store of value role Bitcoin is also moving up.

[00:05:47]And in fact, the two cancel each other out. Actually, the the stronger the stronger move has been gold relative to Bitcoins in terms of the impact on the Bitcoin price.

[00:05:59]So, we're we think that we've Yeah, sure.

[00:06:04]We're in the bottoming out process.

[00:06:08]You know, David Puell, who does our on-chain analytics, says the absolute capitulation [music] would occur, meaning it we may get there. I doubt it the way Bitcoin and other assets are acting.

[00:06:24]But that drop-dead price range is in the 50 to 55,000 range.

[00:06:31]As I said, and and you also are alluding to, we're seeing liquidity moves around the world. And many people, because the headlines are always talking about the Fed being hawkish, not wanting to ease.

[00:06:49]Well, guess what? The Fed funds rate is down 100 175 basis points. [music] And yet, the the narrative out there is, "Oh, they're too hawkish. They're too hawkish." They have started easing. And I think we're going to have um >> [music] >> I think because inflation is going to surprise dramatically on the low side of expectations.

[00:07:13]And I'll give you an anecdote.

[00:07:16]>> [music] >> Pepsi. Now, what the heck does Pepsi have to do with this story?

[00:07:20]>> [laughter] >> Well, we noticed that Frito-Lay, about I'm going to say about 3 months ago, cut its pricing 15%.

[00:07:30]And today it announced that its volume surprised relative to expectations significantly.

[00:07:36]That's what should happen in a low-inflation world. You cut prices, you get more unit growth. And that's certainly the case in the technology world, and we're seeing massive deflation with AI training costs dropping 75% per year, AI inference costs, so how much does it cost ChatGPT to answer your questions?

[00:07:59]Those costs are dropping 85 to 95% per year. So, I think we're going to see a massive wave of good deflation out there. And that is you cut prices, you get big unit growth, and that's why we expect real GDP growth to accelerate as well.

[00:08:19]When the Fed sees inflation dropping, and I don't know if you pay attention to Trueflation, Trueflation's inflation rate, even with gasoline prices doing what they have done, >> [music] >> Trueflation is up to 1.8%. It got below 1%. This is a measure of consumer price inflation. It's blockchain based, it's based on tens of thousands of items measured real time, and the core inflation measure is up to only 1.3%.

[00:08:51]So, there was a tug-of-war in inflation by all measures, including Trueflation, that [music] was in the 2 to 3% range for about 2 and 1/2 to 3 years.

[00:09:04]Trueflation says all of those are going to resolve to the downside. And if that happens, >> [music] >> we believe the Fed will ease, and one of the reasons they'll ease more is because the unemployment rate, while it is low, if you break it apart, you'll see entry-level jobs are being hit here. So, companies are not firing, but they're not hiring either. So, youth unemployment, or 16 to 24-year-old, that is at 8 and 1/2%. And now it did get to 11%. It's at 8 and 1/2%.

[00:09:45]But that that tells you that there is slack in the system on the on the employment side, which is pulling wage growth down, which is very interesting.

[00:09:57]If you look at any wage measures, you'll see they're decelerating as productivity is accelerating. So why would the Fed ease? The Fed would ease because the demand for money >> [music] >> is increasing relative to the supply.

[00:10:14]And that's a function of unit growth.

[00:10:17]And its role is >> [music] >> to equilibri- or to accommodate real economic growth.

[00:10:26]Wood said something that deserves more attention than it usually gets.

[00:10:30]Stablecoins took the role Bitcoin was supposed to play in emerging markets.

[00:10:34]That lane is gone.

[00:10:36]The bottom-up adoption story, payments, transactions, and everyday use have been absorbed by dollar-pegged assets.

[00:10:42]What's left for Bitcoin is the store of value argument, and that argument is now competing directly against gold, an asset that's been winning that fight for months.

[00:10:51]So the $730,000 call rests entirely [music] on Bitcoin eventually closing that gap with gold and then running past it.

[00:10:59]Wood believes the setup for that is forming right now.

[00:11:03]But there's someone else looking at this exact rally and reading it as a pattern the market has cycled through before, and every time it ran this way, it ended the same way.

[00:11:12]So the question is not whether Bitcoin's bull market is intact. Wood says it is.

[00:11:17]The question is whether the conditions that would confirm the next leg are actually forming right now, or whether this rally is running ahead of what the data supports.

[00:11:27]>> [music] >> That is exactly where Benjamin Cowen comes in.

[00:11:30]Because he is looking at the same rally Wood is watching, and what he sees looks very familiar, and not in a good way.

[00:11:38]One of the things that can be difficult in a market is when the market goes against you in the short term. And it's even more difficult because it's sometimes hard to know if it is just a short-term move or if it's the real deal.

[00:11:56]Last year, I said that Bitcoin was entering a bear market. This is about 5 or 6 months ago.

[00:12:02]And one of the things that I mentioned was that it it made sense to just keep the bear goggles on at least for, you know, the first half of 2026, but obviously I I've mentioned October many many times. Now, let's talk a little bit about the bear market rallies. One of the things that I said going into the bear market, this was back in, um, you know, late last year, is I said I wasn't even going to try to time any of the countertrend [music] rallies, right? I wasn't even going to try to time them, but I would talk about them as to when lows in the market would likely occur.

[00:12:41]And one of the ones that I said was I said we likely would have a low in February and then another low in April.

[00:12:51]I said it could be a higher low, but technically speaking, [music] the low, I believe, occurred in late March.

[00:12:57]So, technically speaking, that was that view was wrong because the low actually occurred like the last day of March or the second-to-last [music] day of March, rather than early April. And then also, it wasn't even a a lower low. And, you know, I I I thought there was a decent chance it could be a lower low. So, it it goes to show you why it's so [music] difficult to know exactly when the countertrend rallies are going to occur.

[00:13:23]And when I try, you know, I and I get it wrong, everyone just hates me for like the next 3 months. So, all right, that's essentially where we are right now.

[00:13:31]But, what I want to do is [music] talk a little bit about how bear markets have played out in the past, [music] and you know, is there a reason to take the bear goggles off or or is there not?

[00:13:43]Obviously, one main difference about this bear market compared to the bear markets of prior midterm years is that Bitcoin topped on apathy rather than euphoria. [music] We had a euphoric 2013 top. We had a euphoric 2017 top, >> [music] >> and a euphoric 2021 top. And so, you could say that maybe the bear market characterized after a non-euphoric top would be different, and I I would agree with that in some ways, and that's one of the reasons why we've also made the comparison to the 2019 bear market. Now, some people might say, "Well, why would you call it a non-euphoric top when Bitcoin still went to all-time [music] highs?" Yes, it didn't go up as much as it normally does, but we already would have expected [music] that with diminishing returns, okay? So, what I would say is this.

[00:14:38]When you look at the social interest [music] of crypto this past cycle, it essentially remained relatively [music] low, okay? So, if you look at YouTube views to a lot of the different crypto YouTube channels, you can see that views never really came back. And it's not just YouTube, it's [music] on Twitter as well. And if you look at followers to various analysts on Twitter, you know, that also had pretty big spikes previously, but then this past cycle [music] retail never really came back.

[00:15:09]So, that is the argument for [music] why it was a more apathetic top. And then the other clear argument for a more apathetic top was there was no rotation into higher risk assets like altcoins.

[00:15:20]You can see that Bitcoin dominance has just continued [music] to go up and and recently it's been moving up again and again when [music] you exclude stable coins Bitcoin dominance is at almost a new cycle high. It's not quite there yet.

[00:15:34]But it is it is [music] getting really close to a new cycle high. Has Bitcoin ever gone above the bear market resistance band or bull market support band in a bear market? Has that ever happened? Cuz it is right now, right?

[00:15:47]Like it is above it right now. Has that happened before?

[00:15:51]It has, right? Like it happened in 2022.

[00:15:54]It also happened in 2019 and early 2020.

[00:15:58]It also happened in 2018 a couple of times. And of course it happened in 2014. And when it happened in 2014 what actually happened is it rallied for a couple of weeks, came back and then stayed above it for a couple of months in fact before then going down into the October [music] low. All right?

[00:16:18]And there are certainly some similarities with this move, right? The 2014 move, how you basically just go straight up above the bull market support band and then at some point you likely test it and and then you can see a bounce and then eventually gave up and then still went into the October low.

[00:16:34]And even that wasn't even the low for the market.

[00:16:38]So then now, where are we? Right? Like Bitcoin is above the bear market resistance band. [music] So now arguably the bull market support band, where might it come back down to retest it? Because in 2014 it did come back down to retest it and it bounced. Eventually it gave it up. In 2019 you can see that Bitcoin um got above it and then it retested it a following week, rallied again and then it came back down.

[00:17:07]What was the in like what was it that Bitcoin [music] was running up against that caused it to then go back down to the bull market support band? Well, if you switch over to the daily time frame, and we're going to remove the bull market support band for a second. If you look at the 200-day moving average, right? The 200-day moving average is something that I've I've talked about a lot in the past, how often times Bitcoin likes [music] to check in with that 200-day moving average in a bear market.

[00:17:33]You can see that it happened in 2022. It also happened in 2018. And in fact, in 2018, [music] there were times we got above the 200-day moving average. But the 200-day moving average was a a spot of interest, right? So, in 2019, we got above it in 2020, still had the recession.

[00:17:48]>> [music] >> And then in 2014, you can see we went all the way up to the to that 200-day moving average around kind of the same time period going into the summer, essentially.

[00:18:01]And so, when you zoom in to 2014, and you see the rally that Bitcoin had off of the April low, it rallied into the 200-day moving average, held there for about a week, and then came back down to the bull market support band, and tested it. And it actually tested it um in in mid-June. But you can see how Bitcoin rallied up from the low in April, all the way up here to the 200-day moving average. So, it went past the bull market support band, came back down, tested it, went back up, got rejected again, and then came back down, and then it formed the low in October, which is what I've said is a likely outcome for a low in the market.

[00:18:53]Cowen's argument is built on one question that changes everything. Has Bitcoin done anything in this rally that it has not done before in prior bear markets? And after going through 2014, 2018, and 2019 in detail, his honest answer is no, not really.

[00:19:11]The pattern he keeps mapping is this.

[00:19:13]Bitcoin rallies through the bull market support band, pushes up toward the 200-day moving average, sometimes touching it, and sometimes falling just short. Then pulls back to retest the band, bounces once more, and then makes the next real low.

[00:19:26]In 2014, that final low came in October.

[00:19:29]In 2018, it came in a similar window.

[00:19:32]And Cowen has been pointing at October 2026 >> [music] >> as the likely destination for months.

[00:19:37]We are currently on day 88 since the February low. In every prior bear market, the gap between meaningful lows ran between 140 and 174 days. The clock has not expired yet. Now, here is where both of these views sit together, and why the tension between them actually matters.

[00:19:55]Wood is not wrong about the macro. The Fed has cut rates 175 [music] basis points. Inflation, by real-time blockchain-based measurement, is running [music] at 1.8% with the core reading at just 1.3%.

[00:20:08]AI is collapsing the cost of training and inference at a rate that is pushing genuine deflation >> [music] >> through the entire technology layer of the economy.

[00:20:18]When deflation surprises to the downside and the Fed is forced to respond, liquidity expands.

[00:20:23]And when liquidity expands, Bitcoin has historically been one of the primary destinations for that flow. But Cowen's warning is that the timing of Wood's bull case and the timing of where we actually are in this cycle may not be the same thing.

[00:20:37]You can have a $730,000 Bitcoin by 2030 and still have an October low in 2026.

[00:20:44]Those two things are not contradictions.

[00:20:46]They can both be true.

[00:20:48]The uncomfortable part is that the rally happening right now is the exact kind [music] of move that pulls people back in, makes them feel like the bottom is confirmed, and then delivers the final flush that completes the cycle.

[00:21:01]Wood sees a bottoming process. Cowen sees a bear market doing exactly what bear markets have always done.

[00:21:07]Now, what do you think? Is Bitcoin set for a bear or bull market? Drop your thoughts in the comments. That's it for today. See you in the next one.