Cathie Wood Slams the SEC, Claims Coinbase Will Come Out a Winner

Top investor Cathie Wood has said that Coinbase could come out a winner following the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s latest crypto crackdown. 

The CEO and CIO of Ark Invest slammed the SEC in a Thursday Bloomberg interview and claimed that Coinbase would ultimately benefit from the regulator going after Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange. 

On Monday, the SEC hit crypto behemoth Binance with 13 civil charges and alleged that CEO Changpeng Zhao ran the company through a “web of deception” and commingled funds. 

Wall Street’s top regulator then on Tuesday sued America’s biggest digital asset exchange, Nasdaq-listed Coinbase, for allegedly operating for years as an unlicensed securities exchange and elevating “its interest in increasing its profits over investors’ interests.”

“It was interesting to see the SEC sue Binance on one day and on the next day, Coinbase,” said Wood. 

“And they are trying to put them in the same bucket—and they’re not in the same bucket,” she continued, saying that the Binance complaint was far more serious. 

She added that “we have the competition for Coinbase disappearing, so that’s a good thing longer term for Coinbase.”

Wood, a tech investor enthusiastic about Bitcoin and crypto companies, also said that it was “unfortunate” the SEC took action against Coinbase the day after suing Binance and that SEC Chairman Gary Gensler was “trying to implicate Coinbase in the same way he was implicating Binance.”  

Securities law attorneys told Decrypt that the SEC’s action against Binance was far more serious than the allegations leveled at Coinbase.  

The lawsuits are the SEC’s latest moves in a broad crackdown on the crypto industry—described by some lawmakers and investors as heavy-handed. 

Wood’s Ark Invest has bought large amounts of Nasdaq-listed Coinbase stock. On Tuesday, after the SEC action, it snapped up an additional 419,324 shares worth approximately $21.6 million. 

Also in Thursday’s interview, Wood commented that “we think artificial intelligence is the biggest catalyst to innovation” and would “turbocharge other innovation platforms” such as blockchain technology, robotics and energy storage.