Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest Offloads Over $88M Worth Coinbase’s COIN Shares in 2 Weeks

Investors are closely monitoring Coinbase’s earning reports as shares of the crypto giant COIN are up more than 214% YTD. The fresh boost was provided after the crypto exchange reached an agreement with Cboe’s BZX Exchange to maintain a surveillance-sharing agreement for five of its spot Bitcoin ETF applications.

As a result, funds associated with Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment have rushed to profit from the stock upsurge.

ARK Invest Offloads COIN

The investment fund led by Bitcoin bull Cathie Wood had acquired a significant amount of Coinbase shares during the bear market. While Wood is still optimistic about Coinbase in light of a court ruling against the SEC and favor of Ripple’s XRP, ARK Invest has offloaded $88.5 million worth of COIN shares in the past two weeks.

On July 11, the investment firm sold off $12 million worth of COIN shares just as the stock climbed near a one-year high. Nearly $50.5 million worth of shares, representing 485,000 COIN, were sold on July 14th across three different funds. Three of ARK Investment’s ETFs cashed in COIN’s recent rally, selling a total of 248,838 shares, worth $26.3 million, based on Monday’s closing price of $105.5.

Following a rough start, Coinbase reported a net loss of $79 million in Q1 this year, down from $430 million lost during the same period last year. In a shareholder letter, Coinbase said it was a “turning point” in building a more efficient and financially disciplined company.

Industry players are turning increasingly bullish on Coinbase as shares of COIN witnessed a turnaround despite the crypto exchange receiving a Wells notice in March and being hammered by a lawsuit from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in June.

The crypto exchange is expected to release its Q2 earnings early next month.

Relocating Capital to ‘Laggards’

The recent moves by ARK Invest are unusual as it made a series of buys of Coinbase’s stock during crypto winter. However, Wood attributed the sales to simple profit-taking. In a recent Bloomberg interview, the exec said that the investment firm is instead looking to relocate “capital to perhaps some laggards.” She added,

“Flows are coming back. One of the reasons, ARKK established a base over the last year and it has been trading up and down through that base. I think a lot of investors and more who are technically oriented are looking now at a breakout in our strategy. We’ll see if it continues. We have enjoyed positive inflows in July, which have cut in half the outflows.”

Besides COIN, ARK has also offloaded Tesla (TSLA) shares worth $13 million and instead purchased additional shares of Meta Platforms (META) and Robinhood (HOOD).