Cathie Wood’s ARK sells Coinbase stock for the first time in 2023

The sold amount accounts for 9% of all Coinbase shares bought by ARK Invest so far this year, and about 23% of COIN acquired in March.

Cathie Wood’s investment management firm ARK Invest is moving to take profits from its Coinbase stash, selling the first batch of Coinbase stock this year.

On March 21, ARK sold 160,887 Coinbase shares from its ARK Fintech Innovation exchange-traded fund (ARKF) for $13.5 million, according to an investor notification seen by Cointelegraph.

The transaction became ARK’s first sale of Coinbase stock in 2023, following three months of active buying in 2023. The sold amount accounts for 23% of all Coinbase stock acquired by ARK so far in March and about 9% of all Coinbase shares bought by the firm so far this year.

Following the sale, ARK holds nearly 1.6 million Coinbase shares that were bought in 2023. The shares are worth more than $132 million at the time of writing.

The latest sale comes amid Coinbase stock, which trades as COIN, seeing a significant surge in price, with the shares touching multi-month highs this week.

On March 21, COIN stock closed at $83.99, hitting the price level for the first time since September 2022, according to data from TradingView. The stock has recovered more than 130% since the beginning of the year, but is still down about 54% over the past 12 months.

The upward movement of the Coinbase stock price comes in line with a more positive trend on the cryptocurrency market, with Bitcoin (BTC) hitting multi-month highs amid the ongoing global banking crisis. On March 22, Bitcoin hit 9-month highs above $28,000, significantly recovering price levels triggered by the industry crisis triggered by collapses like FTX.

Related: Bitcoin’s banking crisis surge will ‘attract more institutions’: ARK’s Cathie Wood

The news comes soon after ARK made its biggest Coinbase stock purchase so far in 2023. On March 9, Wood’s investment manager bagged 301,437 Coinbase shares for its ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) and 52,525 COIN stocks for the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW). At the time of the entire purchase, the stock batch was worth about $20.5 million, while its current value is nearly $30 million.