First Mover Americas: Cathie Wood’s Ark Buys More COIN; Do Kwon is in Serbia
TL;DR Cathie Wood's ARK Investment Management bought more shares in Coinbase, The Block revealed that it was secretly funded by Alameda Research, and Waves stablecoin USDN crashed to a record low after receiving an "Investment Warning" from South Korean exchanges.
This article originally appeared in First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.
Cathie Wood's Ark Investment Management bought 78,982 shares in cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (COIN), its first investment in the crypto exchange in a month. At Friday's closing price of $40.24 , the purchase would have cost about $3 million. The stock has been in a funk in recent months, and is down almost 60% from $98 in early August. The purchase takes the ARK Innovation ETF's (ARKK) holding to 5.7 million COIN shares.
Crypto media site The Block (a competitor to CoinDesk) was secretly funded over the last two years by Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research. The Block’s CEO, Michael McCaffrey, immediately resigned after the loans came to light, and will also step down from The Block's board. McCaffrey received three loans for a total of $43 million. The first loan was for $12 million in 2021 the second was for $15 million in January and the third was for $16 million.
Do Kwon, who is wanted internationally in connection with the collapse of the Terra ecosystem, has moved to Serbia through Dubai, CoinDesk Korea reported on Monday. Kwon was the co-founder and CEO of Terraform Labs, which was behind the stablecoin terraUSD (UST) that was deppeged from the U.S. dollar in May. The Terra/Luna domino was the first to fall in a crypto winter that most recently saw the collapse of crypto exchange FTX.
The chart shows the Neutrino dollar, or USDN, an algorithmic stablecoin of the Waves ecosystem, has crashed to $0.784, the lowest on record.Last week, South Korea's Digital Asset Exchange Association, comprising five major crypto exchanges – Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax – labeled WAVES, an asset backing USDN, as an "Investment Warning" asset.The group said WAVES could become volatile due to USDN depeg.The stablecoin has lost its peg at least five times this year.
– Omkar Godbole
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