Last year was unlucky for the crypto market. Investors and crypto users have faced prolonged bearish spells in the past few months due to the sudden collapse of FTX, Terra, and Celsius Network.
Cathie Wood, the Ark Investment CEO, highlighted that in her “45 years on Wall Street and more than 30 years in portfolio management” she had never experienced such unstable market conditions. She highlighted in her blog post that due to high interest rates and inflation, the equity market faced a “wall of worry” in 2022.
“After the most difficult year ever in the equity market for innovation-based strategies, we just sent our clients this letter highlighting the breakthrough technologies that are already transforming the world. In our view, innovation solves problems,” Cathie tweeted.
The ARK investment CEO called digital wallets and blockchain techs “the game-changing innovations” in a blog post. She said that despite the FTX collapse, “public blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum have not skipped a beat in processing transactions.” Wood pointed out that disruptive innovation technologies that solve problems gained profit during difficult times.
She is of the strong belief that digital wallets will soon replace credit cards and cash. In 2020, digital payments overtook cash as the top transaction method and accounted for 50% of global online commerce in 2021.
As per the letter to investors on Thursday, ARK Innovation ETF, Cathie Wood’s flagship fund added 74,792 shares of Coinbase. Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest initiated this step after Bank of America and S&P downgraded Coinbase’s bonds. Over the past five days, COIN is up by 25% trading at $42.23 at the press time. Recently, Coinbase announced 20% of its workforce.
Jason Kupferberg, one of the Bank of America’s analysts said “Given the volatile crypto environment, we think it will be challenging for shares to tolerate a significant downward revision to consensus estimates.”
Recently, Coinbase denied the users’ request to add a provision in the court order that details the organization will waive its right to arbitration, which was in the company’s terms of service.
In an emergency motion on November 18, Coinbase said, “Refusal to provide this basic information is an improper attempt to undermine Coinbase right to compel arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act.”
Cyber scammers used social platforms like Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter to convince users to download a “Coinbase Wallet.” When the targeted users downloaded the wallet, attackers sent links to buy a voucher that seemed like a trusted Coinbase platform, but was actually a malicious smart-contract that helped the hackers steal the user’s funds.
Nearly a hundred Coinbase users across the world raised their voices against the crypto exchange for not taking any measures to protect users. According to a recently filed arbitration demand, “Coinbase took no remedial steps to fix the security flaw or even warn customers about this major problem, despite warning customers about other security risks.”
Nancy J. Allen is a crypto enthusiast and believes that cryptocurrencies inspire people to be their own banks and step aside from traditional monetary exchange systems. She is also intrigued by blockchain technology and its functioning.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2023/01/29/cathie-wood-blockchain-and-digital-wallets-are-game-changing-innovations/