According to disclosures regarding its ETF trades, Ark Invest, the asset management firm of Cathie Woods, has sold some of the shares it held in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and Coinbase.
Since November 21st, it has sold Coinbase shares that were valued at approximately $181 million, while the valuation of the GBTC shares sold stood at $64 million.
The sales
It is one thing to see a company make profits from its GBTC and Coinbase holdings frequently in the past month and another thing to see the total climb up to almost $245 million.
Cathie Woods serves as the chief executive of Ark Invest and the company’s total assets under management are valued at $6.7 billion.
Ark Invest is known for being Bitcoin and crypto-friendly and even issued a monthly report on the pioneer cryptocurrency.
The company uses three of its ETFs to keep its shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and Coinbase. These include the Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK), the ARK Next Generation ETF (ARKW), and the ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF).
In addition, Wood is also full of praise for Bitcoin. In a recent video, she said that she wanted to show just where Bitcoin had been because it was the year’s best-performing asset.
Since the beginning of the year, the value of Bitcoin has gone up by 161%.
The performance
This is partly the reason why the time is ripe to sell shares of both Coinbase and GBTC and not just for Ark Invest.
At the beginning of the year, shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) had been trading for $8.20, but at publishing time, they were trading at $36.04.
Likewise, shares of crypto exchange Coinbase started the year at a price of $33.60, but at publishing time they were trading at $167.86.
In the past month, the world’s first and largest crypto in the world has recorded gains of 14% and at one point, it even managed to go past the $44,000 mark.
This price rally is mostly because of the growing anticipation for the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF approval in January.
The gist
Therefore, the gist of the matter is that even though Ark Invest has sold a considerable amount of its shares already, the ones it is left with have a higher value than they used to.
For instance, the last 30 days have seen the price of Coinbase shares record gains of 52%. Had ARK decided to sell off its Coinbase shares a month earlier, it would have raked in 30% less money.
The returns it would have gotten would have been around $131 million instead of the $181 million it managed to generate through recent sales.
This is exactly how things are supposed to work, as fund managers at Ark Invest purchase shares when there is a decline in prices and sell them during a price rally.
The bigger the difference between the purchase price and the sale price, the higher returns they can generate for investors who have invested in ARK’s funds.