Cathie Wood, chief government officer and chief funding officer, Ark Invest, gestures as she speaks through the Bitcoin 2022 Conference at Miami Beach Convention Center on April 7, 2022 in Miami, Florida.
Marco Bello | Getty Images
LISBON, Portugal — Ark Invest founder Cathie Wood thinks Elon Musk may be onto one thing along with his imaginative and prescient for Twitter.
“He’s thinking about a super app like WeChat Pay,” Wood mentioned on the Web Summit know-how convention in Lisbon, Portugal, Wednesday.
Wood was referring to the digital funds service of Chinese messaging app WeChat. It is used usually in China for issues like instantaneous messaging, social media and funds.
WeChat has been touted because the archetype of a phenomenon referred to as “super apps.” These apps act as all-in-one platforms that serve a variety of consumer wants spanning instantaneous messaging, banking and journey.
Tesla CEO Musk has already hinted at plans to make Twitter an excellent app. Last month, he tweeted that purchasing Twitter was an “accelerant to creating X, the everything app.”
“Remember [Musk] started in the payments industry … he sold his company to PayPal,” Wood mentioned. “He and [Twitter co-founder] Jack Dorsey working together, I think, could turn this into a super app.”
Twitter may in future look extra like a digital pockets, Wood mentioned: “So you do all your banking there, maybe there’s something they’re doing with Cash App,” the net funds app developed by Dorsey’s fintech agency Square.
“You do all your shopping there, you get your loans there — it’s your bank branch in a pocket,” she added. “I think they can get this done.”
Wood, a famous Tesla bull, mentioned Ark has invested in Twitter as a part of Musk’s $44 billion deal to take the corporate non-public.
“[Musk] truly believes in vertical integration,” she mentioned, including Twitter “would be a magnificent vertical integration.”
“He already has designed and is manufacturing the ultimate mobile device, the internet on wheels — it’s called Tesla cars,” she added.
Still, Musk’s takeover of the agency is the topic of great scrutiny by regulators and civil rights activists who concern he might enable dangerous content material to proliferate.
Addressing these considerations, Wood mentioned the “darkness” of Twitter was in its “opacity” round content material moderation choices. “We didn’t see the algorithms and how they were working,” she mentioned.
She added she thinks Musk may flip Twitter into open-source software program, the place the code could be reviewed, modified and shared by the general public.
Source: www.cnbc.com”