Cathie Wood's Ark Invest bought 4.4M Bitmine shares as ETH rallies

Cathie Wood is back at it again, making a strategic move with ARK Invest in its crypto strategy. The fresh disclosure shows that the firm acquired over 4.4 million shares of Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), an Ethereum treasury firm. However, the purchase worth around $175 million was spread across three of ARK’s ETFs.

This comes in when Ethereum is running high on bullish waves, gaining more than 25% in the last 7 days. This surge has pushed the largest altcoin to outperform Bitcoin (BTC) over the past 90 days. ETH went on to reclaim the crucial $3,800 mark long after December 2024.

Cathie Wood goes long on Ethereum

According to ARK Invest’s July 21 trade disclosure, the firm scooped 2.9 million shares of BMNR through its flagship ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK). It added 927.8K shares via ARKW and 555.7K via ARKF.

This can be seen as ARK’s first major move into Bitmine since the company announced it was turning away from Bitcoin and building a massive Ethereum treasury. Bitmine is now holding over $1 billion in ETH after a recent $500 million purchase. It reportedly plans to acquire and stake 5% of the total Ethereum supply.

The ETH staking announcement led Bitmine stock to soar more than to an all-time high of $135 before cooling to around $39. It is still up by almost 800% over the past month. After-hours trading session shows that BMNR is expected to gain by 2% when the market opens. ARK’s move highlights a strong trend among institutional players and a shift from BTC to ETH amid rising momentum for ETH-based ETFs and treasury strategies. As of now, ARK’s Bitcoin ETF ARKB holds $5.81 billion of BTC.

Ethereum price recorded a minor correction of 4% on Tuesday morning after a brief rally. ETH is trading at an average price of $3,660 at press time. Its 24-hour trading volume is down by 4.5% to stand at $44.5 billion.

The digital assets market remained calm as it lost 2% of the gains over the last 24 hours. The cumulative crypto market cap stood at $3.89 trillion with a trading volume of $218 billion. Bitcoin price hovers around $117K-$118K.

ARK ditches old favorites

Cathie Wood’s ARK simultaneously sold 218,986 Coinbase shares (approx. worth $90 million) across three ETFs. It moved ahead to offload 463,293 shares of gaming firm Roblox (approx. worth $57.7 million). Meanwhile, it also made reductions in Robinhood and Block. 

While the ARKK fund remains heavily weighted toward tech names like Tesla (9.7% of the portfolio), Coinbase and Roblox are still its second and third largest holdings, with a 5% allocation to Circle. On July 15, ARK continued to build its Tesla position, purchasing 115,380 shares worth $36.5 million split across ARKK and ARKW.