Cathie Wood Praises Ethereum Foundation's Plans To Boost Scalability And Privacy, Trader Hits Back With 'Please Don't Shill It' If You Don't Use It

Cathie Wood expressed her support on Sunday for the Ethereum ETH/USD Foundation’s proposed upgrades aimed at enhancing the network’s scalability and privacy.

What Happened: Wood, the CEO of asset manager ARK Invest, said that while she may not understand all the technical details, she felt the Foundation seems to be “proposing the right moves.”

“I can't say I understand all of the details here, but the Ethereum Foundation does seem to be proposing the right moves for scalability and privacy to maintain its lead in the institutional world,” she said.

Wood’s endorsement didn’t go down too well with cryptocurrency trader MartyParty, who accused her of shilling products she was unfamiliar with. MartyParty highlighted user pain points for even basic wallet transactions and challenged Wood to validate these on her end.

“If you don't use a product, don't shill it please,” the trader added.

The Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to promoting and developing Ethereum-related technologies, published a blog post detailing its intent to integrate zero-knowledge technology into Ethereum Layer-1.

Ark’s crypto analyst Raye Hadi said the upgrade could have “massive implications” for scalability and privacy, although its execution remains a challenge.

Meanwhile, Wood also weighed in on Ethereum’s scarcity-driven play.

Lorenzo Valiente, Director of Research at Ark, highlighted how the Ethereum exchange-traded funds have raked in as many as 380,000 ETH in the last 9 days, while the network has emitted only 373,000 ETH since The Merge in September 2022.

“The price of any good is determined at the margin, demand relative to supply. The math is mathin,” Wood said, quoting Valiente’s analysis.

Why It Matters: Wood’s firm, Ark Invest, is known for its optimistic outlook about the Ethereum network. It has previously expressed belief in Ethereum’s transformative potential for the financial services industry and likened its developing attributes to those of U.S. Treasury Bills.

Interestingly, Ark Investment withdrew from launching a spot ETH exchange-traded fund, choosing to focus on a spot Bitcoin BTC/USD ETF, i.e, ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF ARKB.

Price Action: At the time of writing, ETH was broadly unchanged at $3,036.15, up 2.74% in the last 24 hours, according to data from Benzinga Pro.

ARKB recorded a high Momentum score as of this writing. Want to see how it compares to other BTC and ETH ETFs? Go to Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings.