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Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest sold about $65 million of crypto-linked stocks and fund shares on Sept. 14, one day before the U.S. Senate voted on advancing the CLARITY Act. The trades included Coinbase, Circle, BitMine, Bullish and shares of ARK’s own spot Bitcoin fund, although there is no evidence the sales were prompted by the legislation.
ARKB Accounts for About $40M of Sales
The largest transaction was the sale of 1,528,953 shares of the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF, or ARKB. The shares were worth about $40 million based on ARKB’s Sept. 14 closing price of $26.19.
ARKB provides exposure to Bitcoin but is not a direct investment in Bitcoin, according to the fund’s official documentation. ARK’s transaction therefore represented a sale of ETF shares rather than a direct disposal of Bitcoin by Wood or ARK.
ARK also sold 36,628 Coinbase shares, valued at roughly $7 million at the closing price, and 142,350 Circle shares, worth about $13.8 million. Coinbase rose 9.2% and Circle gained 7.5% during the Sept. 14 session.
BitMine and Bullish Positions Also Trimmed
The firm sold another 153,881 shares of BitMine Immersion Technologies, valued at roughly $4 million based on the closing price. BitMine is building an Ethereum-focused treasury alongside its other operations.
ARK also disposed of 18,280 Bullish shares, valued at about $688,000. Combined with the Coinbase, Circle and ARKB trades, the transactions brought the estimated value of the crypto-linked sales to around $65 million, using Sept. 14 closing prices.
The trade disclosures do not establish ARK’s reason for individual transactions. ARK actively adjusts positions across its ETFs, and its guidance says the maximum position size at which a security can typically be purchased in its actively managed funds is 10%.
Sales Preceded Failed CLARITY Vote
The transactions came before the Senate’s Sept. 15 procedural vote on H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. The Senate rejected cloture on the motion to proceed by 49-50, falling short of the 60 votes required to advance the measure at that stage. The vote was procedural and was not a vote on final passage.
Bitcoin and several crypto-linked stocks declined after the vote. Coinbase and Circle each fell roughly 9%, while Bitcoin traded around $75,900 during Tuesday’s decline.
Timing Does Not Establish ARK’s Motive
ARK has not publicly linked the Sept. 14 sales to the CLARITY Act vote. The timing shows that the portfolio reductions occurred one day before the Senate action, but it does not establish that Wood or ARK anticipated the vote’s outcome. ARK continued to hold Coinbase, Circle and BitMine shares in its actively managed ETFs after the Sept. 14 transactions, according to its portfolio disclosures.
