Cathie Wood’s ARK loads up crypto bags, buys $19.9M Block shares

ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood doesn’t appear to have been swayed by recent crypto regulatory action, after buying another $19.9 million shares of Block Inc. right after buying $21 million of shares in Coinbase.

Wood’s latest buying spree comes despite the United States Securities Commission suing two of the industry’s exchange heavyweights — Binance (June 5) and Coinbase (June 6) for offering what the regulator considers to be unregistered securities, among other things.

Coinbase’s share price has been depressed in the days following the SEC lawsuit, however, Block Inc.’s shares saw a sharp rise in that same time period.

ARK Invest’s 305,573 new shares of Block came across six buys between June 7-8, which now represents ARK’s fourth largest holding at 4.81%, according to ARK Invest Daily Trades.

Of the new shares, 240,174 were added to its ARK Innovation (ARKK) ETF, 39,099 shares to ARK Next Generation Internet (ARKW) and the remaining 26,300 shares to ARK Fintech Innovation (ARKF).

As for Coinbase, ARK Invest bought 419,324 shares — worth about $21.6 million — across three buys on June 6, which came in the midst of COIN plummeting nearly 20% overnight on June 5.

While many consider the lawsuits to have harmed the crypto firms, Wood recently told Bloomberg that the tougher charges laid against Binance may eventually work in Coinbase’s favor:

“We have Binance under increasing regulatory scrutiny for more criminal activities, fraud being one of them, therefore we have the competition for Coinbase disappearing, so that’s a good thing longer term for Coinbase.”

Coinbase is now ARK Invest’s seventh largest holding at 4.39%, with its total of 11,440 COIN shares spread across its ARKF, ARKK and ARKW ETFs, according to Cathie’sARK.com.

Since Q1, ARK Invest has increased the number of COIN shares by 8.2% — which comes on the back of 20.2% and 25.2% increases in Q4 2022 and Q1 this year, according to Cathie’sARK.com.

Because of regulatory uncertainty, innovation seems to be leaving the US for more friendly regimes. Unfortunate. I believe it will become an election-year issue. https://t.co/PvqK9W27Fd

— Cathie Wood (@CathieDWood) June 4, 2023

While Wood is becoming increasingly bullish on Coinbase, she believes the SEC’s regulation by enforcement approach has taken a toll on cryptocurrency innovators in the U.S.

The tech-savvy CEO is ultra bullish on Bitcoin (BTC) over the long term too.

In the Bloomberg interview, Wood explained that Bitcoin was built to thrive during times of market turbulence and regulatory uncertainty: