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ARK Invest, Cathie Wood’s asset management firm, has sold roughly $181 million worth of Coinbase and $64 million worth of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust shares since November 21, according to disclosures for its ETF trades.
It’s one thing to frequently see the firm taking profits on its COIN and GBTC holdings over the past month, but quite another when it all tallies up to nearly $245 million. The totals were calculated by Decrypt using each share’s closing price for the days when ARK reported what it bought and sold to rebalance its holdings.
Cathie Woods is CEO of ARK Invest, a Bitcoin- and crypto-friendly financial firm with $6.7 billion in assets under management. In fact, they put out a monthly report on Bitcoin. The company tends to keep its Coinbase and Grayscale Bitcoin Trust holdings in three of its ETFs: The ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF), Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK), and the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW).
And Wood never misses a chance to sing Bitcoin’s praises. “Just wanted to show you where Bitcoin is—it’s been the best performing asset this year,” she said during a recent video on the firm’s YouTube channel. Since the start of the year, Bitcoin has climbed 161%.
That’s part of the reason why there’s been no better time to sell GBTC or COIN this year—and not just for ARK. Shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, now trading for $36.04 at the time of writing, started the year trading for $8.20. And Coinbase shares, which were trading for $167.86 on Wednesday afternoon, started the year at $33.60.
The world’s oldest and largest cryptocurrency has climbed 14% in the past month and even managed to top $44,000 at one point. And that rally is largely thanks to the growing anticipation for a spot Bitcoin ETF to get approved as soon as January.
That means even though ARK has unloaded lots of shares, the ones it still holds are worth a lot more than they used to be. For example: Coinbase has climbed 52% in the past 30 days. If ARK had sold its 1.3 million COIN all at once a month ago, it would have raked in $134 million, 30% less than the $181 million it has made off recent sales.
It’s very much how this is all supposed to work that Ark’s fund managers buy when prices take a dip and then sell during a rally. The bigger the difference between the cost basis (purchase price) and the stock price when they sell shares, the better returns are for the investors who’ve bought shares of ARK’s funds.
And if ARK and 21Shares has its way, it’ll soon add a spot Bitcoin ETF to its offerings. Although it hasn’t gotten quite the same attention as BlackRock, it’s one of many companies in the running to register a Bitcoin ETF. The company last filed an update to its S-1 with the SEC on Monday and is due to hear back from the SEC in January like the rest of the contenders.