ARK Invest liquidated its position in PayPal shares. The CEO of the asset-management firm, Cathie Wood, explained the move in an interview with CNBC, citing greater confidence in the prospects of Block’s Cash App (formerly Square).
PayPal owns the mobile payments service Venmo, which in April 2021 added the ability to buy and sell cryptocurrency. But for Wood, Cash App leads due to support for Lightning Network. Unlike PayPal, Block has taken a more holistic approach to integrating wallets with digital assets, according to the ARK Invest CEO.
“We tend to bet on those we believe will be the winners”, she explained.
Cash App’s user base is growing more organically, while Venmo treats the development of cryptocurrency support as a back-burner priority, Wood said.
Venmo’s audience numbers 70 million active users, CashApp — 44 million. In 2021, net income for the former was $850 million, the latter $2.03 billion.
In April 2022, Cash App representatives announced the addition auto-investing features in Bitcoin.
In December 2021, Square changed its name to Block. The move was linked to a desire to reflect the growth of the structure and its commitment to blockchain projects.
Earlier, the company’s CEO Jack Dorsey repeatedly spoke of making digital gold “the native currency of the Internet.”
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