Cathie Wood bullish on Coinbase after Ripple court ruling

Cathie Wood, the founder and CEO of ARK Investment Management, said she remains bullish over Coinbase in light of Ripple’s partial victory over the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 13. 

While Wood noted the ruling wasn’t in outright favor of Ripple, she lauded the outcome as “by and large, very positive for [crypto] exchanges.”

Wood joins the ranks of crypto industry pundits who have made similar points, arguing that the ruling — which found that XRP (XRP) tokens sold to retail investors on crypto exchanges were not securities — could set a positive precedent for Coinbase and Binance in their respective legal battles with the regulator.

Wood explained that despite the crypto exchange receiving a Wells notice in March and being hammered by a lawsuit from the SEC in June, the share price never fell to new lows, suggesting robustness in the value of Coinbase stock.

On July 17, three of Wood’s ARK Investment exchange-traded funds (ETFs) cashed in on the crypto exchange’s recent rally, selling a total of 248,838 shares, worth $26.3 million at the time. These sales came six days after the ARKInnovation ETF sold an additional $12 million worth of Coinbase stock on July 11. 

Coinbase began 2023 trading at just $33.60 a share. At the time of publication, shares of COIN have surged more than 184% since then to reach a price of $105.55, according to data from TradingView.

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While many industry players are turning increasingly bullish on Coinbase, analysts from investment firm Berenberg Capital Markets warned that many aspects of regulation for crypto exchanges are far from being resolved.

In a July 17 investment note seen by Cointelegraph, lead analyst Mark Palmer said that Coinbase Earn — a financial product that offers yield on crypto staking — appears “particularly vulnerable” to being defined as a security in light of the comments made by Judge Analisa Torres in her ruling on the Ripple case.

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Update (July 18, 3:30 am): This article has been updated to include ARK Invest’s July 17 sales of Coinbase shares.