American investor Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest sold another chunk of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust on Monday. A total of 139,506 GBTC shares, worth around $3.8million, was dumped from its ARK Next Generation Internet fund (ARKW).
Following this, Ark made a key financial movement by buying 113,326 shares of Block, Inc. across three of its funds. This was worth around $5.6m.
The investment management firm’s latest trade filing noted adding 70,022 Block, Inc. shares to its ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK), 26,345 to its ARKW fund and 16,959 to its Ark Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF).
Ark Invest’s latest move follows last month’s selling of a part of its GBTC shares when Bitcoin rose in bullish pressure to touch $35,000. As per reports, Ark sold 100,739 GBTC shares, valued at approximately $2.5m ARKW.
This sale happened as GBTC reached its highest value in several months, hitting $24.7 for the first time since May 2022. Back then, the asset had surged by more than 200% year-to-date.
At the time of press, GBTC traded at $26.95 in pre-market trading, up by more than 30% over the past month. However, its discount to net asset value (NAV), which shows how much lower the market price of each share is than the value of the Bitcoin it represents, is trading below 15% for the first time since December 2021.
This might be a repercussion of the recent US Securities and Exchange Commission’s decision (SEC) to appeal against the Grayscale ruling where it attempted to convert its flagship GBTC fund into a spot Bitcoin ETF.
The regulatory watchdog is now re-reviewing the application. The SEC is yet to give a decision on multiple other spot Bitcoin ETFs like the one filed by Ark Invest in collaboration with 21Shares. It has now delayed a decision on this proposed ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF into next year, with a new deadline of 10 January 2024.
On the other hand, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s Block, Inc. reported a 22% rise in Bitcoin gross profit for Q3 last week. This brought in $45 million compared to $37 million during the same period in 2022.
The company attributed the growth to a rise in the average market price of Bitcoin and an uptick in the volume of Bitcoin sold to customers via its Cash App mobile payment service.
Talking about the same, Block’s recent shareholder letter said: “Cash App generated $45 million of bitcoin gross profit in the third quarter of 2023, up 22% year over year. The total sale amount of Bitcoin sold to customers, which we recognise as Bitcoin revenue, was $2.42 billion, up 37% year over year. The year-over-year increase in Bitcoin revenue and gross profit was driven by an increase in both the average market price of Bitcoin and the quantity of Bitcoin sold to customers.”
As of writing, Block, Inc. (SQ) traded at $49.23 in pre-market trading, according to TradingView. Meanwhile, Bitcoin ($BTC) was experiencing the calm after a bullish run, up by almost 25% as of press time. It is currently changing hands for $34,735 on exchanges.
