As regulators apparently look into the company for possible insider trading, one of Coinbase’s major shareholders sold a sizable number of shares.
According to trading data collated by Bloomberg, Cathie Wood’s investment company Ark Investment Management has sold more than 1.4 million Coinbase (COIN) shares overall.
Three Ark exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were involved in the transaction, including Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK), which sold 1,133,495 shares in total, or 0.6 percent of its total assets.
174,611 and 110,218 COIN shares were sold by the Ark Next Generation Internet ETF & Ark Fintech Innovation ETF, respectively. The value of the sold shares was just over $75 million based on Tuesday’s closing price.
On Tuesday, Coinbase shares lost 14 percent of their value and finished at $52.63. However, it has recovered back to 58.83 at the time of writing.
American authorities detained a former CEO of Coinbase Global on July 21 for alleged insider trading. After briefly exhibiting signs of recovery in mid-July, Coinbase stock has been falling ever since. According to information from TradingView, the Coinbase stock has dropped nearly 32% since reaching $77.3 on Friday.
The trade happened after Ark steadily increased its COIN holdings this year, purchasing 546,579 Coinbase shares in May despite a decline in Coinbase share price. Since Coinbase’s IPO last year, the investment company has been actively acquiring its shares, and by April 2022, it will have roughly 750,000 shares total. The stock’s initial opening price was $350.
By holding over 9 million shares by the end of June, Ark ranked third among Coinbase’s shareholders, according to a Bloomberg article. According to reports, the liquidation marked Ark’s first COIN sale of the year.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is looking into Coinbase because of the company’s alleged involvement in cryptocurrency insider trading. Caroline Pham, an SEC commissioner, voiced worry that Coinbase may have inappropriately allowed Americans to deal with crypto investments that should have been reported as securities.
Dwindling Fortunes of Coinbase
Recently, Coinbase was overtaken by Binance in terms of Bitcoin holdings. It would be interesting to see how Coinbases manages to bounce back amid all these adversities.
