ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood is one of the most bullish investors in the Bitcoin (BTC) ecosystem. So, when a podcaster referred to the cryptocurrency as a “dead cat,” she didn’t hold back.
Wood is one of the earliest institutional investors in Bitcoin who once revealed that ARK Invest was the first public asset manager to gain Bitcoin exposure in 2015 when its price didn’t even touch $500.
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Wood says Bitcoin has many lives ahead
Jason Calacanis, the host of the popular podcast “This Week in Startups,” posted Bitcoin’s one-year price chart reflecting a 30% drop on Sep. 18.
Referring to the recent rebound, he called Bitcoin a “dead cat” that continues to bounce. It’s been 17 years since its launch, but the cryptocurrency is not used for transactions and is “intimidating” for most people, he added.
Institutionalization has turned Bitcoin from “punk rock to Muzak,” and though it’s a store of value, it’s boring, he remarked.
“Advocates went from pirates to suits in orange ties, awkwardly sharing cringe memes — just like the cool kids do!”
If Bitcoin were to reach mass adoption with a use case, it would have by now, Calacanis added.
Wood, among the most vocal Bitcoin proponents, pushed back on the podcaster’s critical comments about the cryptocurrency.
“Bitcoin is not a dead cat, Jason! It has many lives ahead.”
She also took the opportunity to share the Sep. 17 episode of ARK Invest’s “Bitcoin Brainstorm” podcast focused on the convergence between AI and Bitcoin.
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ARK’s research allayed quantum fear, Wood says
In the latest episode of “Bitcoin Brainstorm,” Wood, along with ARK’s digital assets research director Lorenzo Valente, Bitcoin Park founder Rod Roudi, AnchorWatch co-founder and CEO Rob Hamilton, Cake Wallet and Radar COO Seth for Privacy, and Unchained co-founder and CSO Dhruv Bansal, discussed how rapidly advancing AI models are changing Bitcoin security.
The experts talked about AI getting better and cheaper and open-weight models being made available. Unlike closed AI models, open-weight models are the final trained parameters, or “weights,” released publicly for anyone to download, run, and fine-tune on their own hardware.
Wood underlined that the combination of domain expertise and AI is unbeatable, as coders are willing to coordinate with AI to find system vulnerabilities. She explained that while attackers are certainly using AI to hack systems, defenders can also use the technology to make the system more secure against vulnerabilities.
She admitted it was unsettling to watch the Bitcoin whale movement as an investor amid the threat of quantum computing. But she said the firm’s research has assuaged those fears.
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Wood bats for Bitcoin within days of dumping $40M in its own BTC ETF
Wood also said that the AI age will be very productive and efficient and accelerate the GDP growth rate to 7%-8% but it will lead to deflation. In such a case, prices will fall but interest rates will rise.
The rise in short-term interest rates will catch institutions, such as private equity firms and banks, off guard, which are heavily reliant on short-term debt. She argued such a scenario creates a counterparty risk that companies you do business with might go bankrupt.
That’s where Bitcoin comes in.
The ARK Invest CEO said most people think of Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation, but even deflation won’t be bad for the cryptocurrency. While traditional markets rely on banking institutions that run a counterparty risk, Bitcoin carries no such risk due to its decentralized nature, she argued her case.
Notably, Wood dumped approximately $40 million worth of its own Bitcoin ETF, the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (CBOE: ARKB), on Sep. 14, a day ahead of the CLARITY cloture vote in the U.S. Senate.
Bitcoin was trading at $81,773 at the time of writing, as per Decibel. The current price is 35% lower than its all-time high (ATH) of $126,080 it hit on Oct. 6, 2025.
Related: Cathie Wood dumps $65 million in crypto ahead of CLARITY vote
This story was originally published by TheStreet on Sep 19, 2026, where it first appeared in the MARKETS section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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