[2017-10-22] Bitcoin Bigger Idea Than Apple, Amazon Says Ark Investments CEO

[aysha9872]

Bitcoin has officially entered the mainstream. The most recent edition of Charlie Rose, the PBS interview show that has endured since 1993, features Cathie Wood, CEO and CIO of Ark Investment Management, along with reporters from the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.

Early in the interview, Wood compares the overall market cap of Bitcoin (in which she includes BCH) to the cap of companies such as Apple or Amazon. She says:
 

“The network value of Bitcoin when you include Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash is little over $100 bln. So it’s come up and it’s come very fast. But it’s at a fraction of Apple’s valuation, of Amazon’s valuation, and we think its a much bigger idea than either of those.”

Bankers and the changing financial world

During the interview, the discussion turns to the ways that Bitcoin will disrupt the banking industry. Because it circumvents bankers, all three participants in the interview agree that the banking industry is very much not pro-Bitcoin. However, according to Wood:
 

“This actually is increasing the public’s interest in [Bitcoin]. So you have Jamie Dimon - very public figure, very well known - along with Howard Marks of Oaktree…all negative. Interestingly, the following week after Jamie’s comment, James Gorman, CEO of Morgan Stanley…speaking about it in very different tones. And I think it’s because they’re beginning to see trading opportunities.”

The world’s radically changing financial landscape has begun to take on new properties that investors and consumers could have never imagined. Comparing the technology to VOIP, Wood remarks that no one understood that voice transmissions could be free over the internet, but now they are. Eventually, “money over IP will be free as well.”
Source: https://www.cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-bigger-idea-than-apple-amazon-says-ark-investments-ceo

[1715593266]

1715593266

[1715593266]

1715593266

[1715593266]

1715593266

[Iranus]

Apple and Amazon were not ideas in themselves.  They were companies, and people who worked for or were interested in the company, who collaborated to produce ideas.

Even though Bitcoin is not a centralised entity, a key similarity between Bitcoin and these companies is that significant numbers of people contribute new ideas to it and allow it to grow, so it is a collection of ideas, not just a single idea.

But what distinguishes BTC and Apple is that Apple's collection of ideas can be made into products which are then marketed and sold and then Apple as a company can grow to continue being the only group that uses the ideas effectively.  Even though anyone can use Apple's ideas in a new product, they are not going to get bigger without some ideas of their own and without a lot of money because Apple has billions of dollars and corporate interests behind them.

Bitcoin has none of this, so people who are capable of marketing can make something else, which contains some of BTC's ideas, and it can become popular alongside or in place of BTC.  BTC's power is primarily in the faith of the users, and that's something which could be quite changeable.

So the way they're looking at this is quite oversimplified.  I don't think that Bitcoin and Apple's market caps are comparable.