Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest has solidified its position as a major player in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector by increasing its investment in OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT. ARK contributed $250 million to OpenAI’s recent $6.6 billion capital raise, making the AI firm the third-largest holding in the ARK Venture Fund. This latest investment underscores ARK’s growing confidence in OpenAI’s potential, as the AI firm’s valuation skyrockets.
ARK Invest Bets Big on OpenAI
ARK Invest’s stake in OpenAI now accounts for 5% of its total assets, according to the ARK Venture Fund’s website. This marks a notable increase from the 4% share ARK held earlier in April, signaling the asset manager’s commitment to further deepening its involvement in the AI space.
This development may come as a surprise to some, given that Cathie Wood had previously lauded Tesla as the top AI project, focusing on Elon Musk’s autonomous vehicle initiatives. Wood had described robo-taxis as a “winner-takes-most” market, suggesting that Tesla would dominate the AI landscape. Yet, OpenAI’s rapid growth and valuation—now sitting at a staggering $157 billion—appears to have reshaped Wood’s investment strategy.
OpenAI’s rise in the tech world has been nothing short of remarkable. Valued at $86 billion earlier this year, the AI firm quickly vaulted to a $157 billion valuation after securing its $6.6 billion funding round. This surge cements OpenAI as one of the most valuable private companies globally. Major players such as Microsoft, AI chip leader NVIDIA, and Thrive Capital were also involved in the fundraiser, with Thrive leading the round with a $1 billion contribution.
Notably, the funding came in the form of convertible senior notes, offering investors the potential for equity conversion in the future—a strategic move that reflects confidence in OpenAI’s long-term growth prospects.
OpenAI’s $4 Billion Credit Line for Expansion
On the heels of the funding round, OpenAI secured a $4 billion revolving credit line from prominent financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo. This additional capital boost elevates OpenAI’s liquidity to $10 billion, positioning the company to scale its infrastructure and compete head-to-head with tech giants like Google.
According to OpenAI’s finance chief, Sarah Friar, the credit facility will bolster the company’s balance sheet, enabling it to invest in the costly computing power necessary for AI advancement. This includes acquiring high-performance chips from NVIDIA, a critical component in maintaining its competitive edge.
Cathie Wood’s Strategic Play
Cathie Wood’s increased investment in OpenAI is a strategic move that aligns with her broader vision of investing in transformative technologies. Despite previously emphasizing Tesla’s dominance in AI, her decision to expand ARK’s stake in OpenAI suggests a dual bet on both AI and autonomous vehicle sectors.
As OpenAI continues to innovate and scale, its rivalry with industry giants like Google and Elon Musk’s xAI will likely intensify. However, with $10 billion in liquidity and backing from major financial and tech players, OpenAI appears well-positioned to maintain its trajectory of explosive growth.
ARK Invest’s increased stake in OpenAI marks a pivotal moment in Cathie Wood’s investment strategy. With OpenAI’s valuation surging and its financial resources expanding, ARK’s bet on the AI firm could yield substantial returns in the coming years. As AI continues to transform industries, Wood’s focus on innovative technology companies remains a bold and calculated approach to securing long-term growth.
Crypto AI agents coins are gaining fresh momentum as the sector shows signs of recovery. ARC, VIRTUAL, and TRAC are three standout tokens leading the narrative into the end of April.
ARC and VIRTUAL have posted explosive gains in the past 24 hours, while TRAC remains steady with more modest growth but strong fundamentals. With technical indicators like golden crosses appearing across all three charts, these tokens are worth watching closely in the coming days.
AI Rig Complex (ARC)
ARC has seen extreme volatility in recent months, crashing 91% between February 11 and April 11 amid a broader correction in crypto AI agent tokens.
However, the token has staged a sharp rebound, climbing nearly 66% in the past week and soaring 44.5% in just the last 24 hours.
ARC is the project behind Rig, an open-source framework designed to help developers build portable, modular, and lightweight artificial intelligence agents.
Technically, ARC is showing early signs of a potential trend reversal. A golden cross formed on its EMA lines yesterday, and another could be on the way.
If the bullish momentum continues, ARC could test the $0.071 resistance and possibly extend to $0.083. On the flip side, if the recent strength fades, support levels at $0.048 and $0.043 will be key.
A breakdown below those levels could open the door for a retest of $0.034.
At its peak, the project reached a staggering market cap of nearly $5 billion, though it has since retraced significantly to $521 million.
Despite the decline, VIRTUAL is showing signs of renewed strength, jumping 49% over the last seven days and gaining 40% in the past 24 hours alone—suggesting that interest in AI-driven crypto tokens may be making a comeback.
From a technical perspective, VIRTUAL’s EMA lines have formed consecutive golden crosses since yesterday, pointing to growing bullish momentum.
If it can break through the $0.84 resistance level, the next target would be $0.97. Should market sentiment continue to improve and hype around crypto AI agents return, a move toward $1.22 is possible—marking its first time above $1 since early March.
However, if the current uptrend falters, key support lies at $0.79. A break below this could send VIRTUAL down to $0.64, or even as low as $0.517 in a deeper pullback.
OriginTrail (TRAC)
TRAC, OriginTrail’s native token, powers a decentralized ecosystem that aims to build a trusted knowledge infrastructure for artificial intelligence.
Its goal is to enable a Verifiable Web for decentralized artificial intelligence applications. While TRAC experienced a 32% correction between March 26 and April 7, it held up better than many other crypto AI agent tokens.
In line with that resilience, TRAC is up 7.4% over the last seven days — the smallest gain among major AI tokens, yet still positive.
Technically, TRAC’s EMA lines have just formed golden crosses, hinting at the early stages of an uptrend.
If momentum continues, TRAC could test resistance at $0.448, and a breakout there could send it toward $0.492 and potentially $0.54.
On the downside, traders are keeping a close eye on the $0.377 support level. Failure to hold that zone could trigger a drop to $0.35 and, in a deeper correction, possibly down to $0.317.
Social engineering scams are on the rise, and these exploits have particularly targeted Coinbase users throughout the first quarter of 2025. According to a series of investigations by ZachXBT, users have lost over $100 million in funds since December 2024, while annual losses reached $300 million.
After sorting through the complaints made by different users, BeInCrypto spoke with Coinbase Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Jeff Lunglhofer to understand what makes users vulnerable to these kinds of attacks, how they happen, and what’s being done to stop them.
Gauging the Seriousness of Scams Affecting Coinbase Users
Throughout the first quarter of 2025, several Coinbase users fell victim to social engineering scams. As the leading centralized exchange in a sector where hacks are becoming more sophisticated with time, this reality is no surprise.
In a recent investigation, Web3 researcher ZachXBT reported on several messages he received from different X users who had suffered major withdrawals from their Coinbase accounts.
1/ Over the past few months I imagine you have seen many Coinbase users complain on X about their accounts suddenly being restricted.
This is the result of aggressive risk models and Coinbase’s failure to stop its users losing $300M+ per year to social engineering scams. pic.twitter.com/PjtX7vmjqc
On March 28, ZachXBT revealed a significant social engineering exploit that cost one individual close to $35 million. The crypto sleuth’s further investigations during that period uncovered additional victims of the same exploit, pushing the total stolen in March alone to more than $46 million.
In a separate investigation concluded a month earlier, ZachXBT revealed that $65 million was stolen from Coinbase users between December 2024 and January 2025. He also reported that Coinbase has been quietly grappling with a social engineering scam issue costing its users $300 million a year.
While Coinbase users have been particularly vulnerable to social engineering scams, centralized exchanges, in general, have also been significantly impacted by these increasingly sophisticated attacks.
How Does The Broader Context Reflect This Situation?
Public data regarding the evolution of social engineering scams in recent years is limited and somewhat outdated. Yet, the numbers in the available reports are staggering.
In 2023, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) under the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released its first-ever cryptocurrency report. Investment fraud constituted the largest category of cryptocurrency-related complaints, representing 46% of the nearly 69,500 complaints received, or approximately 33,000 cases.
The FBI’s IC3 reported an increase in crypto-related scams in 2023. Source: IC3.
Investment fraud, or pig butchering, involves false promises of high returns with low risk to lure investors, especially crypto newcomers driven by a fear of missing out on significant gains.
According to the IC3 report, these schemes rely on social engineering and building trust. Criminals use platforms like social media, dating apps, professional networks, or encrypted messaging to connect with their targets.
In 2023, these investment scams resulted in losses of $3.96 billion for users, representing a 53% increase from the previous year. Other social engineering scams, like phishing and spoofing, further constituted $9.6 million in losses.
Coinbase scammers tend to create fake emails that appear legitimate using cloned website images and false Case IDs. They then contact users through spoofed calls, leveraging private information to build trust before sending them these deceptive emails.
Once scammers have convinced users of the interaction’s legitimacy, they exploit the situation to persuade them to transfer funds.
The increasing sophistication of these scams illustrates both the emotional manipulation involved and the particular vulnerability of the victims. They demonstrate that centralized exchanges are often the primary platforms for these exploitations.
ZackXBT’s investigations and user reports on X reveal a gap between the extent of social engineering scams and Coinbase’s apparent management effectiveness.
Public discussions indicate that Coinbase has not flagged theft addresses in common compliance tools.
Victims of scams and users whose funds were frozen are urging Coinbase to take stronger action against this growing and costly issue. Understanding how these scams take place is essential to effectively addressing them.
How Are Coinbase Users Made Victims?
In January, a victim contacted the investigator after losing $850,000. In that instance, the scammer contacted the victim from a spoofed phone number, using personal information likely obtained from private databases to gain their trust.
5/ They then sent a spoofed email which appeared to be from Coinbase with a fake Case ID further gaining trust.
They instructed the victim to transfer funds to a Coinbase Wallet and whitelist an address while “support” verified their accounts security. pic.twitter.com/pOTQpnMfCz
The scammer convinced the victim that their account had suffered multiple unauthorized login attempts by sending them a spoofed email with a fake Case ID. The scammer then instructed the victim to safelist an address and transfer funds to another Coinbase wallet as part of a routine security procedure.
Last October, another Coinbase user lost $6.5 million after receiving a call from a spoofed number impersonating Coinbase support.
The victim was coerced into using a phishing site. Eight months earlier, another victim lost $4 million after a scammer convinced them to reset their Coinbase login.
ZachXBT raised concerns about Coinbase’s lack of reporting the theft addresses in common compliance resources and their perceived inadequate handling of the escalating social engineering issue.
In a conversation with BeInCrypto, Jeff Lunglhofer, Coinbase’s Chief Information Security Officer, shared his version of the events.
Coinbase CISO Addresses Social Engineering Scams
Despite Coinbase’s clear understanding of the widespread harm caused by social engineering scams affecting its users, Lunglhofer stressed that the broader crypto community should address this problem collectively rather than entrusting the responsibility to a single entity.
“In the context of the broader social engineering challenge that’s out there, of course, Coinbase customers are impacted. We’re keenly aware of it. We’ve been rolling [out] a number of control improvements to help protect our users, and, I think more importantly, we are working with the broader industry to bring these ideas and these control uplifts across the industry, across all crypto exchanges, across everything,” Lunglhofer told BeInCrypto.
Coinbase’s CISO referenced the exchange’s collaborative efforts with other platforms to combat this problem in his reply.
Specifically, Lunglhofer pointed to the “Tech Against Scams” initiative, a partnership with industry players like Match Group, Meta, Kraken, Ripple, and Gemini to fight online fraud and financial schemes.
Lunglhofer also added that Coinbase takes a similar approach when flagging theft addresses.
Why Coinbase Handles Theft Addresses Differently
When BeInCrypto asked Coinbase why it doesn’t publish theft addresses across popular compliance tools, Lunglhofer explained that the exchange has a different procedure for these scenarios.
“We will communicate with other exchanges directly [and] let them know the addresses that we’ve seen where assets have been withdrawn,” he said, adding that “when we see that there’s, in fact, fraudulent [activity], we will pull back all the wallets that are associated with the fraud and we’ll push those out to the other exchanges that we have communications with,” he said.
Lunglhofer also mentioned Crypto ISAC, an intelligence and information-sharing group established by Coinbase in collaboration with various other crypto exchanges and organizations to distribute information related to scams.
Coinbase’s Struggle Against the Flood of Spoofed Content
Lunglhofer admitted that the number of spoofed emails Coinbase identifies or receives in the form of reports far exceeds the exchange’s capacity to take them down.
“Regrettably, they’re a dime a dozen. I can open ten of them in five minutes. It’s super easy to do. So there’s not a lot we can do about that. But, when we identify them [or when] a customer reports them, we do have them taken down,” he said.
Coinbase uses vendors to eliminate circulating spoofs or phishing campaigns in those instances.
“We have several vendors that we use to do takedowns. So anytime we see a fraudulent phone number pop up, anytime we see a fraudulent URL [or] a fraudulent website get established, we will issue those for takedown. We’ll use our vendors to work with the DNS providers and others to bring those down as quickly as possible,” Lunglhofer told BeInCrypto.
Although these preventative measures are essential for the future, they provide minimal recourse for users who have already lost millions of dollars to scams.
Whose Responsibility Is It? User vs. Exchange
Coinbase did not respond to BeInCrypto’s inquiry about developing an insurance policy for users who lost savings to social engineering scams, leaving their approach in this area unclear.
Yet, social engineering scams are complex, relying on significant emotional manipulation to build trust. This complexity raises questions about the degree of responsibility that falls on user vulnerability versus potential shortcomings in the centralized exchange’s user protection measures.
The broader cryptocurrency community generally agrees that more educational materials are necessary to help users distinguish between legitimate communications and scam attempts.
Regarding this issue, Lunglhofer clarified that Coinbase will never call users out of the blue. He also noted that Coinbase has recently implemented different features that act as warnings for users potentially interacting with a scam.
Furthermore, the CISO cited a ‘scam quiz,’ an educational tool that appears as a real-time banner when a user is about to undertake a transaction flagged as suspicious by the exchange.
Though this feature is an advantage, its ability to protect users is hard to quantify, especially regarding how efficiently it flags suspicious activity. Coinbase did not respond when BeInCrypto asked if the exchange internally tracked data related to social engineering scams.
A similar issue arises with Coinbase’s ‘allow lists.’
The $850,000 Coinbase Loss
Coinbase offers a feature that enables users to create a safelist of approved recipient addresses to help prevent transactions to unfamiliar or unverified addresses. Lunglhofer strongly urges Coinbase users to adopt this measure.
“We offer every retail customer the ability to create ‘allow lists’ for wallets that they’re permitted to transfer assets to. On my personal account on Coinbase, I have ‘allow listing’ turned on, and I only have three wallets that are allowed,” Lunglhofer detailed.
However, the $850,000 scam loss suffered by a Coinbase user in January, as revealed by ZachXBT, shows a critical limitation of safelists.
Even after a victim adds a theft address, manipulation leading to this addition can still occur, thereby neutralizing the intended protection.
Can Coinbase Do More to Protect Users?
Sophisticated social engineering scams are a growing threat, creating significant challenges for crypto users. Coinbase users and centralized exchanges in general are particularly affected.
Despite Coinbase’s outlined efforts, the significant financial losses highlight the limitations of current industry-standard measures against determined scammers.
While cooperation is crucial across the board, Coinbase, as a leading platform, must also put more proactive efforts and resources into educating its users.
Social engineering is predominantly a user-driven issue, not a security failure for any exchange. Yet, platforms like Coinbase have the critical responsibility to lead industry-wide initiatives to address these threats.
The millions lost are a stark reminder that vigilance and collective action are paramount in safeguarding users against these increasingly refined and frequent attacks.
Bitcoin is rebounding after tariff chaos, and public companies like Metaplanet are conducting major acquisitions. The firm bought $28.2 million worth of the asset, nearly a $2 million increase from last week.
However, despite this new confidence, Metaplanet’s stock has continued to perform shakily. The crypto market is showing cautious optimism, but that won’t immediately translate into major gains.
Bitcoin Rebounds as Metaplanet Increases Purchase Size
“Metaplanet has acquired 330 BTC for ~$28.2 million at ~$85,605 per bitcoin and has achieved BTC Yield of 119.3% YTD 2025. As of 4/21/2025, we hold 4855 $BTC acquired for ~$414.5 million at ~$85,386 per bitcoin,” he claimed.
Still, markets are showing cautious optimism, not a full rally. A quick look at some major crypto-related stocks will paint a clearer picture.
MicroStrategy rose over 4% in the last five days and nearly 6% in the last month, but it’s a pillar of confidence in BTC. Metaplanet, a much smaller Bitcoin holder, only fell 1.89% in the last five days but over 20% in the last 30.
In other words, it can be difficult to cleanly connect Bitcoin’s recent successes with major holders like Metaplanet. Compare two prominent US-based crypto miners, Marathon and Riot.
The former recovered from its slump in early April, while the latter only continued to drop. Coinbase, too, has only made brief rallies on a trend of continual decline.
While Bitcoin’s adoption has surged dramatically over the past year, there’s still a lot of uncertainty about tariffs and recession. Metaplanet may be in shaky territory right now, but its confidence in Bitcoin can provide a long-term sense of stability.
