ARK Invest Buys Another $10.8M in Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust

Amid a tumultuous 48 hours for crypto markets, ARK Invest, the investment house led by Cathie Wood, has increased its stake in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and Coinbase.

Over the past two days, the New York-based firm purchased 210,681 shares of crypto exchange Coinbase worth as much as $47.39 million, as well as 450,224 shares of GBTC worth over $10.8 million.

Currently, one Coinbase share trades at $224.96 (+4.35%), while GBTC closed Tuesday’s trade at $24.02 (-1.23%).

According to data shared by ARK Invest, on Monday the firm bought 48,977 shares of Coinbase for its ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW) and 22,900 for the ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK). More purchases followed on Tuesday, with 120,069 Coinbase shares added to ARKK and 18,735 to the ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF).

In the same period, the firm increased its stake in GBTC, snapping up 310,067 shares on Monday, followed by the addition of 140,157 shares on Tuesday. Both purchases were made through ARKW.

ARK Invest rushed to be among the first to buy Coinbase stock after the crypto exchange debuted on the Nasdaq in April this year. The firm has since been growing its stake in the San Francisco-based company regularly, having increased its combined stake to $1.3 billion.

It’s a different story with GBTC, however. The last time Wood’s firm purchased Grayscale’s Bitcoin stock was a month ago, on June 23, when the price of Bitcoin dipped below $30,000 for the first time this summer.

At press time, Bitcoin is trading hands at $30,932, up 4.3% over the past 24 hours.

The two last purchases brought ARKW’s total holdings of GBTC to over 9 million shares, worth $216.9 million. However, despite the increased amount of shares, GBTC’s weight in ARKW fell from 3.99% to 3.76%, while Coinbase made it to the top ten with a new weighting of 4.07%.

ARKW, one of the firm’s flagship exchange-traded funds, is topped by Tesla, Twitter, and Shopify. Following last Friday's $54 million purchase of Square stock, however, the payments company has bolstered its presence there, moving up to the fourth position.

Cathie Wood’s firm also holds a stake in Square via both ARKF and ARKK, with the combined value of shares in the three funds exceeding $1.8 billion.