Cathie Wood's Ark abandons PayPal in favour of the Bitcoin-friendly

Cathie Wood's Ark abandons PayPal in favour 

of the Bitcoin-friendly Cash App

Wood feels that Venmo is simply a clone of Cash App, which has more than doubled Venmo's earnings from nearly half the number of customers.

Cathie Wood, the founder of crypto investment firm Ark Invest, has sold all of the firm's PayPal assets and expressed higher confidence in the long-term growth of the Cash App payment system, which leverages the Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning Network.

Wood discussed her company's decision during the Miami Bitcoin 2022 conference, which concluded on Saturday.

The Lightning Network (LN) is a layer-2 Bitcoin tool that allows for quicker and cheaper transactions. PayPal, a financial technology business, runs the payment software Venmo, which competes directly with Block's (previously Square) Cash App.

Wood stated in a conversation with media in past days that she chose Cash App over PayPal because of its more complete approach to digital asset wallet integration. Although Venmo has begun to accept Bitcoin, she claims that "it's more of a follower of Cash App."

“We tend to put our bets with who we believe will be the winners As we consolidated our portfolios during a risk-off period, we chose Block over PayPal.”

Wood went on to say that her company's belief in Cash App originates from what she sees as organically-driven development in users "as opposed to more of a top-down approach" from Venmo. Wood feels that ordinary investors have driven the crypto market to this stage, as she stated:

“I don’t think most institutional investors are positioned the way they ultimately will be. Retail has really led the charge here.”

As per app tracker Business of Applications, Venmo presently has 70 million users and a profit of $850 million, while Cash App has 44 million users with a profit of $2.03 billion in 2021. Another motivator for Ark's evaluation of the two companies might be the significant difference in their capacity to generate net profits.

Because Ark Invest is positive on Cash App, its Bitcoin product lead Miles Suter revealed on Thursday that American users would be able to automatically invest a percentage of their direct transfers into Bitcoin.

Wood is a strong Bitcoin supporter, and she predicted in the interview that BTC will reach $1 million by 2030.