Cathie Wood: Blockchain and digital wallets are game-changing innovations
Last year was unfortunate for the crypto market. Investors and crypto users have faced prolonged bearish periods in recent months due to the sudden collapse of FTX, Terra and Celsius Network.
Cathie Wood, managing director of Ark Investment, highlighted that she had never experienced such volatile market conditions in her “45 years on Wall Street and more than 30 years in portfolio management”. She highlighted in her blog post that due to high interest rates and inflation, the stock market faced a “wall of concern” in 2022.
“Following the toughest year ever in the stock market for innovation-based strategies, we just sent this letter to our clients highlighting the breakthrough technologies that are already transforming the world. In our view, innovation solves problems,” Cathie tweeted.
The ARK investment manager called digital wallets and blockchain technologies “the game-changing innovations” in a blog post. She said that despite the FTX collapse, “public blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum haven’t skipped a beat in processing transactions.” Wood pointed out that disruptive innovation technologies that solve problems profited in difficult times.
She is of the strong conviction that digital wallets will soon replace credit cards and cash. In 2020, digital payments overtook cash as the preferred transaction method and accounted for 50% of global online commerce in 2021.
According to 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 started this step after Bank of America and S&P downgraded Coinbase’s bonds. Over the past five days, COIN has risen 25% and was trading at $42.23 at press time. Recently, Coinbase announced 20% of its workforce.
Jason Kupferberg, one of Bank of America’s analysts said “Given the volatile crypto environment, we think it will be challenging for stocks to tolerate a significant downward revision to consensus estimates.”
Recently, Coinbase rejected users’ request to add a provision to the court order detailing the organization will waive its right to arbitration, which was in the company’s terms of service.
In an emergency filing on Nov. 18, Coinbase said, “The refusal to provide this basic information is an inappropriate attempt to undermine Coinbase’s right to compel arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act.”
Cyber fraudsters used social platforms such as Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter to convince users to download a “Coinbase Wallet”. When the targeted users downloaded the wallet, attackers sent links to purchase a voucher that appeared to be 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 worldwide raised their voices against the crypto exchange for not taking any measures to protect its users. According to a recently filed arbitration claim, “Coinbase took no remedial steps to fix the security flaw or even warn customers about this major issue, 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 money exchange systems. She is also fascinated by the blockchain technology and its function.
