"Fortune" interview with "Sister Wood": If the Bitcoin spot ETF application is approved, how will it change the encryption industry?

On July 6, "Fortune" magazine published an article about ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood (Sister Wood), which mainly focused on the Bitcoin spot ETF, which is currently highly concerned. In the interview, Ms. Wood reviewed the past history of ARK Invest's application submission, and emphasized that she does not think that BlackRock has an advantage over ARK Invest in terms of application.

The following is the entire content of the interview, compiled by Odaily Planet Daily.

Last week, I met Cathie Wood at the "ImPower Fund Forum" summit held in Monaco, and I was lucky enough to sit down and chat with her. ARK Invest, which she is at the helm, focuses on the disruptive innovation industry and uses the knowledge of Crypto and Web3. Known for bold investing.

ARK Invest has made headlines a number of times recently for resubmitting a bitcoin spot ETF application to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Cathie Wood said that this application was submitted after the SEC had repeatedly rejected the applications of ARK Invest and other similar companies, which may give ARK Invest the opportunity to launch the first bitcoin spot ETF in the United States and grab the market opportunity.

In our chat, Cathie Wood shares her thoughts on Bitcoin's potential, the challenges of the regulatory environment, and her vision for the future of digital assets. The interviews and answers below have been edited to keep the full text concise and clear.

• Q1: Can you describe how your initial idea of founding ARK Invest came about?

**Cathie Wood:**Before ARK Invest was founded, especially after the tech and telecom crash, and the 2008-09 economic crisis, I saw a shift away from innovation in traditional asset management in favor of passive and benchmark-sensitive strategies . I said, "No, we have to focus on innovation, because there are five major technologies that are evolving right now." That includes DNA sequencing, robotics, energy storage, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technology, all of which are evolving at the same time.

These innovations will lead to explosive growth — what we call super-exponential growth — and we don’t think people understand that yet. They're going to upend the traditional world order, so we want to focus on change and educate more people on that, we have an open research ecosystem, and we're making our research freely available. We'd love to see people comment on our research, especially from front-line innovation areas, which can give us more feedback and test our hypotheses.

• Q2: What about your involvement with cryptocurrencies and blockchain? I have learned that you have personally invested in Bitcoin since 2015, can you tell us your initial impressions of Bitcoin and this technology?

Cathie Wood: We've been curious about Bitcoin since 2011. Our chief futurist, Brett Winton, is obsessed with it, so we talk about it a lot. When ARK Invest was created, we began to dedicate resources to research, and now ARK Invest has three cryptocurrency analysts. In 2015, our analysts wrote a thesis. I had my mentor, the famous economist Art Laffer, read it and critique it. When he learned what Bitcoin was, he said, "This is what I've been waiting for since the dollar went off the gold standard!" My reaction was, "Well, that sounds great! " That was in 2015, when the price of Bitcoin was $250, and we established our first Bitcoin position through GBTC.

• Q3: BlackRock recently submitted a bitcoin spot ETF application, and ARK Invest had jointly submitted an application with 21 Shares in April last year (but was rejected). Do you think this attempt will be successful?

Cathie Wood: Well, a lot of people think that BlackRock has some wind up about the SEC, we don't think that's true. We think this has been going on for a long time now (suggesting that the SEC has repeatedly rejected applications), but the Grayscale v. SEC case (questioning why the SEC rejected its Bitcoin spot ETF application) is coming to an end in the near future — — possibly in August — if the SEC loses this case, the chances of a bitcoin spot ETF getting approved will increase. We have submitted the application, and the SEC will review it by mid-January next year, and BlackRock by March next year. The SEC has now approved a number of bitcoin futures ETFs and recently approved a leveraged bitcoin futures ETF. Futures involve swaps, while spot ETFs (at least the grayscale version) are fully backed by bitcoins stored in cold wallets, so we think spot trading is safer than futures. In our opinion, SEC approval The situation (pass futures ETFs, reject spot ETFs) is paradoxical.

• Odaily Planet Daily Note: Grayscale filed a lawsuit against the SEC in June 2022. Previously, Grayscale’s application to convert GBTC into a Bitcoin spot ETF was rejected by the SEC. The SEC said that there was fraud and manipulation in the spot Bitcoin market, and Grayscale stated that any fraud in the Bitcoin spot market will inevitably affect Bitcoin. The price of futures, but the SEC has approved some applications for bitcoin futures ETFs, and this logic is untenable.
• Q4: If the SEC finally approves the Bitcoin spot ETF, to what extent do you think it will change the development of the encryption industry?

Cathie Wood: For a long time, we have been worried that the SEC will drive innovation out of the United States. Innovation has always been in America's DNA, which is why we're delighted that both the judicial and legislative branches are getting involved.

So this (bitcoin spot ETF approval) may mean that once we fully put the rules in place, we will stop driving out innovation and bring more innovation back. It's also going to be a global phenomenon, and we're very excited because there are a lot of other innovation hubs that are trying to make it happen, and we want to because it's a global movement.

• Q5: Do you think the SEC will favor BlackRock? That is, approve their applications but reject yours.

Cathie Wood: We don't think so. We know they have a supervisory sharing clause in their application profile and ours doesn't, but as far as I know, we don't spend too much time revising the application profile, and all institutions' applications are moving in this direction.

• Note from Odaily Planet Daily: This interview with Fortune was completed last week, but it was only released today for the first time. Shortly after the interview was completed, ARK Invest had amended its application profile to add a BlackRock-like oversight sharing agreement.
• Q6: Currently, there are some other cryptocurrency news that is gaining attention, such as the recent launch of EDX Markets, while other large institutions such as Citadel Securities and Fidelity are also getting involved in cryptocurrency. What do you think of this?

Cathie Wood: Yeah, I think some events from last year to date have disrupted the rhythm of the institution, like FTX and all the turmoil, and also like some of the lawsuits, especially the SEC lawsuit against Coinbase. But I think we've seen the worst of it, and the results are interesting, we're finding that institutions want to know more, they're becoming more natural. So, you can see they want to be ready for the new asset class.