Cathie Wood's Ark Invest Drops PayPal in Favor of Bitcoin-Friendly Cash App

Wood sees Venmo as just a clone of Cash App, which more than doubled Venmo's revenue from about half

Cathie Wood, founder of crypto investment firm Ark Invest, has sold all of the firm's PayPal assets and expressed interest in the long-term growth of the Cash App payment system using the Bitcoin (BTC) lightning network.

Wood discussed her company's decision at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, which ended Saturday.

The Lightning Network (LN) is a Layer 2 bitcoin solution that enables faster and cheaper transactions. PayPal is a financial technology company that runs the payments software Venmo, which competes directly with Block's Cash App (formerly known as Square).

Wood said in an interview Friday that she chose Cash App over PayPal because of its more complete integration with digital asset wallets. While Venmo has begun accepting bitcoin, she claims "it's more of a Cash App follower.

"We usually bet on who we expect to win [...] We chose Block over PayPal because we integrated our asset-off stage during the venture."

Wood went on to say that her company's belief in Cash App stems from her belief that organic user growth "rather than a more top-down approach" comes from Venmo.