ARK Invest increased its equity holdings in Coinbase on the same day the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) slapped legal papers on cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.On June 6, ARK Invest notified investors that the company had acquired about 419,324 shares of Coinbase Global Inc., which had a value of almost $21.6 million at the time of closing on that same day.
This occurred after the recent lawsuit news and the current SEC action, which caused Coinbase stock to drop more than 20% on June 6.The price of Coinbase’s shares is at $53.11 at the time of writing.The inclusion of Coinbase stocks in the portfolio of ARK Invest continues a pattern.On May 2, a little over a month earlier, ARK Invest added an additional 168,869 Coinbase shares, for a total transaction value of about $8.5 million.The company invested in 2.4 million shares in March for roughly $117 million and 304,300 shares in April for around $17.5 million, respectively.
The SEC recently filed a complaint against Coinbase, alleging that the exchange never registered as a broker, national securities exchange, or clearing agency and that it offered unregistered securities.In response, Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, posted on Twitter that his staff is “confident in our facts and the law.”The potential “to finally get some clarity around crypto rules” in court, he noted, is something he embraces.
On June 6, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, Paul Grewal, testified before the US Congress that the business had “embraced regulation” since its inception and that in 2022 alone, it met with the SEC 30 times for regulatory guidance.A task team of state security authorities from various states, including Alabama, California, Illinois, and Vermont, also issued a show-cause order to Coinbase on June 6.It claimed that the exchange had broken the securities laws by offering its staking incentives scheme.