ARK's recent investments
On Friday 16 April 2021, Cathie Wood's ARK funds invested in more shares of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global. ARK Invest therefore bought 187,078 shares in Coinbase, which made its debut on Nasdaq, the world's largest electronic share market. This purchase represents almost $64 million. The flagship ARK Innovation fund alone now owns $168 million worth of Coinbase.
The new funds, from the beginning of April 2021, are based on three segments of ARK Invest's investment strategy: the ARK Innovation flagship fund, Next Generation Internet and Fintech Innovation. ARK Invest is in the midst of a major buying spree, with 1,277,469 shares, including Coinbase, purchased in the space of three days.
ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood sold 134,541 Tesla shares worth $99.5 million from her flagship fund and Next Generation Internet. Despite this, Tesla remains the New York investment management firm's largest position by value across its main funds.
The bets companies and businesses are placing on cryptocurrencies are getting bigger and giving them greater exposure. This new distribution of investments shows the confidence and commitment of a company that advocates disruptive innovation. Finally, although the company is selling Tesla shares, it is still in line with the direction taken by Elon Musk's company. Indeed, the company recently invested in Bitcoin and has stated that it will accept cryptocurrency as payment for its cars.
What is ARK Invest?
ARK is an investment management company that offers a variety of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) focused on so-called disruptive innovation. ARK invests in innovations that represent a real breakthrough within a sector of activity by radically renewing the way it operates. These ETFs can be found in companies such as Tesla, Square and Teladoc Health.
ARK Invest's investment strategies
ARK Invest believes that the leaders in disruptive innovation are public companies. For this reason, the investment company seeks to offer these companies long-term growth. It does this by covering different market capitalisations, sectors and geographical areas. According to their website, ARK Invest has set up thematic investment strategies.
Autonomous technology and robotics: This sector aims to invest in autonomous mobility, electric vehicles, robotics and automation, 3D printing and space exploration. These investments seek to improve productivity while reducing costs and transforming manufacturing, production and infrastructure.
Genomics revolution: This sector is investing in DNA sequencing, gene editing, CRISPR, therapeutics, agricultural biology and molecular diagnostics. The aim is to restructure healthcare, agriculture and pharmaceuticals and improve quality of life.
Next-generation Internet: This theme highlights areas such as artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, cybersecurity and blockchain technology. These innovations are changing the way we manage information, analyse data, consume goods and communicate in general.
Fintech innovation: Closely related to the previous theme, fintech innovations correspond mainly to digital advances in transactions: mobile payments, digital wallets, peer-to-peer lending, blockchain technology and the transformation of financial risks. These innovations could revolutionise the financial industry and the global economy.
Space exploration: This theme aims to support all companies involved in reusable rockets, satellites, drones and other orbital and suborbital aircraft and all space-related activities. These innovative investments aim to transform logistics, observation, agriculture, telecommunications, drones, and potentially send humans to Mars.
Cryptocurrencies: ARK has a very specific opinion on cryptocurrencies. In their view, a few crypto-currencies will capture the majority of value as we have seen since the emergence of bitcoin and the rise of a global battle between currency systems. As such, ARK believes in cryptocurrencies governed by neutral, open source networks enabling value storage and transfer mechanisms to create an open base of solid guarantees of wealth and monetary integrity.
ARK.io, ARK Invest's cryptocurrency
ARK price
At the beginning of April 2021, the price of ARK is €1.90 with a 24-hour trading volume of €6 million. The CoinMarketCap ranking puts it at 172. We can see that the price of ARK reached €8 in January 2018, in reaction to the ARK network going online a few months earlier. Its price has not risen since the start of 2021. Following the trend of other cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin, the ARK price has risen above €2 in recent months.
ARK price
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How ARK.io works
ARK.io
ARK.io is a cryptocurrency and blockchain-based development platform. Founded in 2016, ARK launched an ICO (Initial Coin Offering), which raised $800,000. The ARK crew, the nickname given to the team developing the project, thus succeeded in financing this entity. A year later, in 2017, the ARK public network was set up, hosting the ARK cryptographic asset.
The ARK ecosystem consists of an open-source blockchain stack created in the TypeScript programming language. This allows anyone to create their own fully customisable and interoperable blockchain using a graphical user interface. This plug-and-play creation method allows developers to make full use of ARK's consensus model, Stake and custom transactions.
The ARK public network supports specific transaction types, such as multi-payment, multi-signature and various registration transactions. The architecture of the ARK Blockchain Framework is fully modular. This allows you to customise your chain according to the needs of your application, including with different languages soon implemented.
Minage by putting on ARK.io?
Like the Cosmos system, ARK cannot be mined. It is forged by the elected delegates who manage the network. ARK operates on a Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) blockchain. Blocks are forged by 51 delegates every 8 seconds. For each block forged, 2 ARKs reward the work of the delegate. Delegates are elected by all ARK token holders and can therefore campaign. ARK holders vote with 1 ARK for 1 vote. There is therefore a lock on one vote per wallet address to avoid problems of centralisation of power. ARK holders can therefore take several actions: vote for a delegate (1 ARK), withdraw their vote (1 ARK), pay transaction fees (0.1 ARK), increase the security of a wallet with a "pass phrase" (5 ARK), apply for the position of delegate (25 ARK).
Buying and exchanging ARK
ARK can be purchased on any cryptocurrency exchange platform that supports it, such as Binance, OKEx, Upbit, VCC Exchange. For more details, you can see the full list on the ARK website.
