ARK Invest Sells $20.6M in Coinbase Shares Amid Bitcoin ETF Anticipation

On January 5, ARK Invest, owned by Cathie Wood, sold an additional 133,823 shares of the digital currency exchange Coinbase, which began trading for the day at $152.67 and ended trading at $153.98.

On January 8, the asset management company based in the United States posted its trades for January 5 on X (which was formerly known as Twitter).

These trades included the sale of 107,151 Coinbase shares from its ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK), 15,892 shares from its ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW), and 10,780 shares from its ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF).

The Coinbase shares sold off in the most recent transaction had a total worth of approximately $20.6 million, with the stock price hovering around $153.98.

Moreover, it sold a portion of its stake in Stratasys and acquired shares in Palantir Technologies and Iridium Communications by purchasing those companies. Additionally, ARK sold 166,000 Coinbase shares on January 3, 2023, for a total value of around $25 million.

ARK Invest has scheduled another sell-off of 237,000 shares for December 5, 2023. ARK Invest has made around $78 million from selling Coinbase shares in only the months of December and January alone. ARK continues to own a sizeable number of shares on the exchange, even though it is continuing to sell off its Coinbase holdings.

Coinbase continues to be the most valuable asset in the ARKK ETF, accounting for 10.04 percent of the whole portfolio. It is also the greatest asset in the ARKW ETF, amounting to 10.37%, and it is the largest asset in the ARKF ETF, amounting to 13.41%.

These sales take place at a time when the cryptocurrency industry is waiting with bated breath for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to either approve or reject the first spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) that is available to investors in the United States.

Wood owns ARK Invest, one of the fourteen companies that submitted an application to the SEC for a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. ARK developed the spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) known as ARK 21Shares in conjunction with 21Shares, a Swiss provider of exchange-traded products for cryptocurrencies.

ARK and 21Shares were the first institutions to submit changes to their spot Bitcoin ETF file before the SEC’s December 29th deadline. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) received a registration notification from the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF on January 4.

The SEC has until January 10 to either approve or disapprove of the ETF application.