ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood cut her long-term Bitcoin price projection by $300,000, warning that stablecoins are eroding Bitcoin’s role as a store of value in emerging markets.
“Stablecoins are usurping part of the role that we thought Bitcoin would play,” Wood, who previously forecast a top BTC price of $1.5 million by 2030, told CNBC on Thursday.
“Given what’s happening to stablecoins, which are serving emerging markets in a way that we thought Bitcoin would, I think we could take maybe $300,000 off that bullish case, just for stablecoins.
Stablecoins are scaling here, I think, much faster than anyone would have expected,” she said.
Despite the lower price forecast, Wood said she remains bullish on Bitcoin (BTC) overall, and called it a “global monetary system” that serves as a store-of-value asset similar to gold but distinct from stablecoins, which are just cash tokenized on a blockchain.
Related: Galaxy trims 2025 Bitcoin price target to $120K amid shifting market dynamics
Emerging market economies turn to stablecoins
US dollar-pegged stablecoins could siphon over $1 trillion from the legacy banking system in emerging markets by 2028, according to international bank Standard Chartered.
This is particularly true for jurisdictions that suffer from hyperinflation, sanctions or currency controls, such as Venezuela and Argentina, forcing residents to save in alternative fiat currencies such as the US dollar, to protect their purchasing power.
The annual inflation rate of the Venezuelan Bolivar has surged to 269% in 2025, according to data compiled by the International Monetary Fund, pushing millions of residents to adopt dollar-pegged stablecoins like Tether’s USDt (USDT) as their savings vehicle.
Strict currency controls and a two-tiered currency exchange system in Venezuela have popularized stablecoins as a reliable alternative to physical dollars or US dollar deposits in a bank.
In 2024, reports emerged that Venezuela’s government was using stablecoins to bypass US sanctions and facilitate international oil trading.
Magazine: Bitcoin vs stablecoins showdown looms as GENIUS Act nears
