A shift in strategy? Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest has made a surprising U-turn on Bitcoin, selling off a chunk of its own spot Bitcoin ETF for the first time since launch.
Ark Invest sold 118,209 shares of its ARKB spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, valued at $7.76 million, from its Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW) on Wednesday. This marks the first instance of the Cathie Wood-led investment firm selling shares in the Ark Invest and 21Shares-issued ARKB since the launch of the spot Bitcoin ETFs in January.
Ark’s investment strategy is designed to prevent any single holding from exceeding 10% of an ETF’s portfolio to maintain diversification. This approach indicates that Ark is likely to continue rebalancing its holdings if ARKB’s value increases relative to its other investments within the fund.
In March, Cathie Wood clarified that Ark Invest’s Coinbase share sales was a strategic decision and not a “dumping” of the stock. She emphasized that active portfolio management involves making such adjustments.
“We are not dumping. This is what active management is all about.”
According to recent disclosures, ARKB is the largest holding in the ARKW ETF, with a weighting of 10.98% as of July 24, surpassing Tesla, Roku, and Coinbase, which have weightings of 9.5%, 8.48%, and 8.23% respectively.
ARKW’s ARKB holdings have a market value of $162.5 million, with the spot Bitcoin ETF appreciating by about 31% since its inception. Overall, ARKW’s fund has seen a 33% gain over the past year.
On Wednesday, ARKB closed at $65.62, remaining flat for the day with a slight increase of 0.17%. Meanwhile, Bitcoin dropped nearly 1% yesterday and is currently trading at $64,491, according to The Block’s bitcoin price page.
Last week, Ark sold a significant amount of Coinbase shares from the ARKW fund, valued at $4.3 million, for the first time since May. On the same day, Ark acquired $3.5 million worth of CrowdStrike shares amidst the global Microsoft IT outage linked to the cybersecurity firm.
