American businesswoman Cathie Wood, founder and CEO of the investment firm Ark Invest, praised the growth strategies based on Bitcoin and AI that the president of El Salvador is promoting.
Wood said that Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has a clear and attractive vision of the future based on Bitcoin and Artificial Intelligence, which could boost the nation's economic, technological and social growth in the next 5 years.
According to Wood, who reported on his meeting with President Bukele on social media, El Salvador's gross domestic product (GDP) could increase tenfold during the president's second term, which began on June 10, motivated by the incorporation of Bitcoin and other innovative technologies in the nation's economic and educational reforms.
The founder of Ark Invest also reported on El Salvador's plans to integrate her company's ARK Educate curriculum into the country's schools, in order to educate the next generation of professionals in key areas of development and innovation, such as robotics, energy storage, Artificial Intelligence (AI), blockchain technology and multi-omics.
“Since 2020, our educators have made ARK research age-appropriate”, said Wood on his company's curriculum.
El Salvador will be an oasis for Bitcoin innovation
After meeting with President Bukele, Wood assured that El Salvador will become a Bitcoin oasis, offering a potential environment for innovation and community development around this financial technology. The American businesswoman also stressed that, together with Bitcoin and artificial intelligence, El Salvador's national economy could experience explosive growth in the coming years, due to the innovation represented by both technological revolutions, which are considered the largest in history so far.
El Salvador’s current GDP is in a downturn, Wood said, noting that the monetary value of the country’s assets is currently about $30.000 billion, and that the average income is only about $450 a month. But he also emphasized that Bukele clearly understands tax policy, and that the president can see many ways to take advantage of the boost that the tax incentives he has put in place could give the nation.
During the meeting, held in the office of the president of El Salvador, the advisors were also present Stacy Herbert, director of the country's National Bitcoin Office; Max Keizer, promoter of decentralized cryptocurrency; Arthur Laffer, renowned American economist and David Puell, onchain researcher at ARK Invest.
The promise of a safe and prosperous country
At his inauguration for his second term, President Nayib Bukele promised Salvadorans that he would make El Salvador a prosperous country, just as he has made it much safer for its inhabitants.
Bukele, in addition to being popular for making El Salvador the first country in the world with Bitcoin as legal tender, to encourage economic and technological development, has also gained popularity for his fight against gangs, with which he seeks to provide people with greater security and a better quality of life.
“Just as we made this country safe, we are going to make this country prosperous”, Bukele stressed.
President Bukele's meeting with Cathie Wood also focused on discussing new investment opportunities in Bitcoin and other technologies, which would improve the nation's attractiveness to foreign capital investors.
Wood is the founder of one of the asset management firms that was authorized by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this year to launch a Bitcoin spot ETF on the market. At the time of writing, this BTC ETF has over 47.170 bitcoins in reserve, making it the fourth-largest Bitcoin ETF in the country.
Main image from The Bitcoin Office (The National Bitcoin Office of El Salvador)
