Crypto investment company Ark Invest founder Cathie Wood has dumped all of the firm’s holdings of PayPal and showed greater confidence in the long-term growth of the Cash App payment system which uses the Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning Network.

Wood explained her firm’s move at the Miami Bitcoin 2022 conference which wrapped up on Saturday.

The Lightning Network (LN) is a layer-2 solution for Bitcoin meant to facilitate faster and cheaper transactions. Financial technology company PayPal operates the payment app Venmo as a direct competitor with Block’s (formerly Square) Cash App.

Wood said in an interview with CNBC on Friday that she made the decision to drop PayPal for Cash App due to its more comprehensive approach toward digital asset wallet integration. She said that although Venmo has begun to accommodate Bitcoin, “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 continued that her firm’s conviction in Cash App stems from what she perceives to be the organically-driven growth in users “as opposed to more of a top-down approach” from Venmo. Read More...