Kathy Wood: We Bought Bitcoin at $250 in 2015... and Many Mocked Us Back Then

Famous investor Kathy Wood, CEO of Ark Invest, revealed that her first Bitcoin purchase was in 2015 when the price of one coin was around $250.

Wood said during her appearance on The Diary of a CEO Podcast that her first Bitcoin was bought in the summer of 2015, explaining: "We entered the market at around $250 per coin, and today the price has risen significantly, which confirms that we entered very early and were convinced we were heading in the right direction."

She added that many people mocked her investment in Bitcoin at that time, considering it just a marketing stunt to attract attention, especially since she was new to the investment fund space, saying: "They thought we were trying to attract attention, while we knew they had no idea about the amount of research we had done on this asset."

Wood explained that she asked her professor, Art Laffer from the University of Southern California, to review the first research paper her company prepared on Bitcoin, which discussed whether the cryptocurrency could perform the three functions of money: a medium of exchange, a store of value like gold, and a unit of account.

She pointed out that Chris Burniske, the company's first Bitcoin analyst, wrote the research paper, adding that Laffer, after reading it, told them: "This is what I’ve been waiting for since the United States removed the gold standard in 1971... a global monetary system based on clear rules."

Wood confirmed that she realized early on that Bitcoin was an exceptional idea, so she sought to add it to her personal investment portfolio, expressing great happiness about that decision.

It is worth noting that Kathy Wood predicts a long-term price target for Bitcoin at $1.2 million, despite reducing some of her previous forecasts amid the rapid growth of stablecoins, indicating the possibility that U.S. President Donald Trump might start buying Bitcoin directly to build a strategic U.S. reserve planned for 2026, considering this step could align with political considerations ahead of the midterm elections.