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Katherine Wood: "Digital Wallets and Blockchain Will Revolutionize the World of Finance"

The CEO of ARK Invest believes that digital wallets and blockchain technology are game-changing innovations in the financial sector.

Catherine Wood, in her publication, said that last year's fluctuations in the stock market were due to “rooted inflation and rising interest rates”. However, the stock market in vain ignored some innovative technologies.. The CEO is convinced that cash and credit cards are about to be replaced by digital wallets, which accounted for about 50% of international trade in 2021.

Katherine Wood believes that the situation with the FTX cryptocurrency exchange did not affect the mission of the main cryptocurrencies, since transactions are made around the clock and uninterruptedly in the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks. Transparency, as well as decentralization of distributed registries, the head of the investment company emphasized, can solve the problem of fraud and negligence in the circulation of funds, which often occurs in organizations with centralized management.

The collapse of FTX taught cryptocurrency investors to be more careful in choosing services for storing crypto assets. The head of ARK Invest referred to data from TheBlock, according to which the trading volume on decentralized exchanges increased from 8.35% to 11.4%. At the same time, the total trading volume on crypto exchanges decreased by 66% year on year, from $1 trillion in 2021 to $357 billion in 2022.

Wood added that in her 30 years in investment management, she has never experienced such volatile conditions.. The market is seeing a shrinking money supply as investors hold large amounts of cash, something that hasn't happened since the 2001 crisis. However, the latest technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) are popular even in turbulent times.

Katherine Wood recently said that former FTX CEO Sam Bankerman-Fried dislikes Bitcoin for being decentralized and uncontrollable.. Previously, Wood suggested that the capitalization of bitcoin could reach $4.5 trillion, as it would be more valuable than fiat currencies.