Another $11.9 Million in Coinbase Stock: Cathie Wood Continues Investment Program

The founder of Ark Invest, an investment company, Cathie Wood, spoke about another planned purchase of shares of the Coinbase crypto exchange, as a result of which a total of 296,578 COIN tokens worth $11.9 million were added to the company's exchange-traded funds (ETF) on Wednesday. By the way, the price of Coinbase shares on Tuesday fell to an all-time low of $38.69, but on Wednesday it jumped by almost 4% to $40.19. Most of the tokens purchased by Ark Invest, namely 176,364 COIN, came under the management of the flagship ETF Ark Innovation (ARKK), as a result of which its assets increased to 6,139,480 shares worth $246.7 million. The second largest batch, which included 93,117 Coinbase shares worth $3.7 million, was redirected to the ARK Fintech Innovation (ARKF) ETF, while the ARK Next Generation (ARKW) Internet ETF received a total of 27,097 COIN. In fact, yesterday's purchase was the largest acquisition of shares of a cryptocurrency exchange in the current quarter. Cathie Wood's funds have continued to buy Coinbase's assets on a regular basis despite the pressure the firm has faced this year. As a result of the market crash, the valuation of ARKK fell by 65% in 2022. However, buying COIN for Ark Invest looks like a typical double bet. Back in November, Wood said that the collapse of FTX benefits the crypto industry as it helps to “test in battle” the infrastructure and possibilities of decentralization.

 

Ripple's David Schwartz Launches Ethereum-Based NFTs

Ripple’s Chief Cryptographer and CTO, David Schwartz, has announced the launch of a new Ethereum-based author’s NFT collection Ugly on the Outside, which will be sold on the OpenSea NFT trading platform. The collection consists of 28 tokens, the minimum price of each of which is currently estimated at 0.25 ETH. At the same time, the main NFT collection of the Ripple CTO is still on Sologenic, as well as on XRP.Cafe. In addition, Schwartz also experimented with creating NFTs using Xungible based on XRPL, but the collections did not receive a serious resonance in the community. As for Ugly on the Outside, the collection is accompanied by the following definition: “Feel free to name yours after anyone you know who is as ugly on the inside as these folks are on the outside. Images are generated with Stable Diffusion. Creator promises not to sue the holder of any NFT in this collection for infringement of any copyright they may have on the image.“ Recall that Stable Diffusion is a mathematical model for generating images based on text, capable of creating photorealistic images using detailed descriptions. It cultivates autonomous freedom for artists who want to create original images that can be defined as works of art, yet created in seconds.

 

Cybercriminals Gained Access to the Personal Data of Gemini Customers

Several clients of the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange received phishing emails, after which representatives of the trading platform said that they had encountered a data breach caused by "an incident at a third-party vendor." According to a December 14 Gemini blog post, the "incident" resulted in hackers obtaining approximately 5.7 million Geminis customer email addresses and incomplete phone numbers, as most phone numbers had several digits blurred out, allowing full combinations they failed to obtain data management. It is also reported that as a result of the leak, the attackers were unable to obtain information containing customer names, addresses, or data on the passage of the “Know Your Customer” procedure. It is worth noting the fact that the list collected by hackers contained duplicate email addresses. Therefore, it can be assumed that the total number of received email addresses and phone numbers is less than 5.7 million. However, despite the fact that Gemini reacted to the situation on December 14, members of the crypto community on Reddit and Twitter stated that the incident took place several weeks ago. Later, several other users of the crypto exchange joined the discussion, who stated that they also received suspicious emails. Beneath these messages, a Gemini spokesperson wrote that they would forward these statements to the trading floor's security team.