(Bloomberg) -- The election of Donald Trump will usher in a wave of private-company purchases that had previously been slowed by red tape, investor Cathie Wood said in an interview in which she also reiterated her ultra-bullish view on Bitcoin.
Wood, the founder of ARK Investment Management LLC, said changes at the Federal Trade Commission will unlock latent merger-and-acquisition demand and create “liquidity events” for venture capitalists.
“M&A has been prevented by the FTC. That is going to change,” Wood said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “So we are finally going to have price discovery as strategic buyers bid for these innovative companies. We’ll see how much they’re really worth.”
The 69-year-old investor also reiterated the best-case bull call on the biggest cryptocurrency she’s made previously, saying Bitcoin could go above $1 million by 2030. The coin’s rally this year has pushed it to top $108,000. A loosening of regulations under the incoming president will accelerate growth that is underpinned by supply-and-demand dynamics in an asset whose production is capped at 21 million coins, she said.
“It is becoming even more scarce than gold,” Wood said. “The difference between gold and Bitcoin is, when the gold price goes up, as it has, production goes up, the rate of increase in the supply goes up — that can not happen with Bitcoin.”
Wood has gained both fame and scorn for long-shot bets on burgeoning technology that have fed repeated boom-and-bust cycles in her $6.7 billion ARK Innovation ETF. Her predictions for Bitcoin and Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc. are famously extreme, though both assets have handed major windfalls to their owners in 2024.
The fund manager also predicted Musk will be effective in his new initiative to slash the size and scope of government as part of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE for short, because he’s knows the effects of regulatory pressures and obstacles firsthand.
“He just knows he can change the world faster than he already has if he got some of those obstacles out of the way,” said Wood.
--With assistance from Scarlet Fu.
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