ARK Invest dumps further 133,000 Coinbase shares as BTC ETF deadline looms

Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest sold a further 133,823 shares of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase on Jan. 5 as the stock opened trading for the day at $152.67 and ended at $153.98.

On Jan. 8, The United States-based asset management company posted its trades for Jan. 5 on X (formerly Twitter), which included a sale of 107,151 Coinbase shares from its ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK), 15,892 from its ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW) and 10,780 from its ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF).

The recent divestment of Coinbase shares had a total value of roughly $20.6 million, with the stock price hovering around $153.98. 

It also sold some of its Stratasys holdings and purchased shares of Palantir Technologies and Iridium Communications.

ARK also dumped 166,000 Coinbase shares on Jan. 3 worth around $25 million, a sale preceded by another sell-off of 237,000 sell-off on Dec. 5, 2023.

In December and January alone, ARK Invest has netted around $78 million from its sell off of Coinbase shares. 

Despite these continuing divestments of Coinbase shares, ARK still holds a significant number of shares in the exchange. Coinbase remains the largest asset in the ARKK ETF, comprising 10.04% of the portfolio. It’s also the largest asset in the ARKW ETF at 10.37% and the largest in the ARKF ETF at 13.41%.

The sales come as the crypto community waits impatiently for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to approve or deny the first spot Bitcoin BTCUSD exchange-traded fund (ETF) available for U.S. investors.

Wood’s ARK Invest is among the 14 companies that have filed for a spot BTC ETF with the SEC. ARK’s spot Bitcoin ETF, ARK 21Shares, was developed in collaboration with Swiss firm 21Shares, which offers cryptocurrency exchange-traded products. 

ARK and 21Shares were the first to submit updates to their spot Bitcoin ETF filing prior to the SEC’s Dec. 29 deadline.

On Jan. 4, the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF filed a registration notice with the SEC, which has until Jan. 10 to approve or deny the ETF application.