ARK Invest, a technology and fintech firm run by Cathie Wood, made its largest investment in Coinbase (COIN) stock since Dec. 14 on Thursday, adding about $5.5 million of the shares, based on closing prices.
The firm bought more than 158,000 shares for its ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF). While the firm has added smaller amounts of the stock in recent days, on Dec. 14 it about purchased a total of almost 300,000 shares at a closing-price cost of about $12 million. Those were allocated mainly to the ARK Innovation Exchange-Traded Fund (ARKK).
Coinbase's stock closed at $34.78 in New York Thursday, up roughly 7%. Shares in the exchange have been hit hard by the crypto bear market, falling 86% this year. COIN has underperformed both bitcoin and ether, with the world's largest digital asset falling by 65% year-to-date and the eponymous token of the Ethereum protocol falling by 66%.
In late November, Wood continued to demonstrate her bitcoin conviction by purchasing 176,945 shares ($1.5 million) of Grayscale's Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). Currently, shares of GBTC are trading at a 48% discount to the net asset value of bitcoin.
Grayscale is owned by Digital Currency Group, which is also CoinDesk's parent company.
A trade report email from Dec. 30 shows that Wood also purchased 22,514 shares of Tesla's (TSLA) stock for ARK's Innovation ETF (ARKK), worth about $2.74 million. TSLA is down around 69% this year, as investors worry that high inflation and a possible recession will reduce demand for expensive electric vehicles.
