Cathie Wood’s Ark funds has purchased a total of $352 million worth of Coinbase shares, two days after making its debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker, COIN. 

Ark Funds’ COIN Acquisition Spree

Citing data received by email, Bloomberg reports today that Wood’s funds, including the Ark Innovation ETF, Ark Fintech Innovation ETF, and Ark Next Generation ETF together added 341,186 COIN to their holdings yesterday. 

This is the second investment in a roll that Wood’s Funds have made in Coinbase. Ark’s funds earlier purchased 749,205 Coinbase shares moments after it went live on Nasdaq. The shares were acquired at approximately $250 million, with each unit priced around $333.67. 

With the latest acquisition, Wood’s funds now hold a combined 1,090,388 Coinbase shares, valued at around $352 million, at the time of writing. 

According to Bloomberg, the emailed data suggests that Ark funds sold some of its stake in New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange for two consecutive sessions. 

Wood Receives Indirect Bitcoin Exposure

Despite its large purchase of Coinbase shares, Tesla stock (TSLA) remains the top holdings of Wood’s funds even after selling about $170 million worth of shares of the electric car company. 

Ark funds’ investments in Coinbase and Tesla, increase their indirect exposure to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. 

As reported, the American electric car company had purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin in February 2021, thus boosting the cryptocurrency’s popularity among various institutional investors and wealth managers. 

Coinbase Performance on Nasdaq

Coinbase has continued to gather attention globally following its direct listing on Nasdaq on Wednesday. Even after getting a reference price of $250 for a unit of its share, COIN opened at $381 and subsequently surged to $429.54, before retracing back to $310. 

The share closed around $328.28 on Wednesday, which saw the popular crypto trading firm’s market cap set at $85.8 billion. 

Unfortunately, the stock slumped further on Thursday and closed 1.7% lower, bringing the exchange’s value below 43% of the $112 billion it hit in its debut.

Turkey’s government has introduced a new regulation that will prohibit cryptocurrency assets from being used as payment methods as of April 30th, citing significant risks. Nevertheless, banks are excluded from the legislation, meaning that users can still deposit the Turkish Lira on crypto exchanges through their banking accounts.

Turkey’s Ban on Crypto Usage as Payment Methods

According to the official statement from the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, the country plans to implement a new regulation on interacting with cryptocurrencies starting from April 30th.

Essentially, it will prohibit cryptocurrency investors from utilizing their holdings as instruments for payments or to use them “directly or indirectly in the provision of payment services and electronic money issuance.”

The last part means that payment providers will also be banned from providing cryptocurrency-related services. The bank listed numerous security risks connected with digital assets as the primary reasons behind the new regulation.

Those include lack of “regulation and supervision mechanisms,” severe market volatility, alleged usage in illicit activities, and irrevocable transactions.

“Recently, some initiatives have emerged regarding the use of these assets in payments. It is considered that their use in payments may cause non-recoverable losses for the parties to the transactions due to the above-listed factors, and they include elements that may undermine the confidence in methods and instruments used currently in payments.” – reads the statement.

It’s worth noting that banks are exempt from this regulation, and users can still deposit the Lira on exchanges using wire transfers from their banking accounts.

CryptoPotato recently reported the rapidly increasing demand for bitcoin in Turkey. After President Tayyip Erdogan removed the governor of the central bank, the Lira plummeted by 15% in a day against the dollar. At the same time, the number of BTC Google searches and transactions on peer-to-peer exchanges skyrocketed.

Turkey Behind Today’s Price Slumps?

Shortly after the statement from Turkey’s central bank today, the cryptocurrency market sharply tanked in value, raising the question if the FUD coming the country could be behind the adverse developments.

Bitcoin traded at nearly $64,000 before a sharp price drop drove it south by roughly $3,000. Ethereum followed with a nosedive of its own, and so did most alternative coins. Ultimately, the cumulative market capitalization of all crypto assets lost more than $80 billion since yesterday’s high and dipped beneath $2.2 trillion briefly.

Binance announced the completion of the 15th BNB burn earlier today of just shy of 1.1 million tokens. Although the amount in coins has substantially declined compared to the past several such events, it set a record in terms of USD with almost $600 million. 

• The announcement from the Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange from earlier today reads that the company has completed the 15th quarterly BNB token burn “in accordance to the Binance whitepaper.” 
• The amount of coins destroyed is 1,088,888. Interestingly, this is actually the fourth-smallest amount burnt in terms of BNB and is considerably less than the previous event – 3,619,888 BNB. 
• However, the price growth of Binance’s native token has helped it set a new ATH in terms of the US dollar. The company said the 15th BNB token burn was worth $595.3 million.  
• The popular crypto exchange has vowed to buy and destroy BNB worth a certain percentage of its quarterly profits until it brings down the token supply to 100 million. After the latest event, the BNB supply is down to 154.5 million.  
• Binance Coin is among the best performers price-wise since the start of the year. BNB entered 2020 beneath $40 but has rapidly appreciated in value. 
• CryptoPotato reported the latest record reached earlier this week when the cryptocurrency skyrocketed to $640.  
• Although BNB has fallen by more than $100 since then and currently trades just shy of $520, it’s still up by about 1,200% YTD.