Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest dumps 1.41 million Coinbase (COIN) shares

Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management has sold 1.4 million shares of its Coinbase Global Inc. (NASDAQ: COIN) shares, according to details shared on Wednesday.

The dump happened as the Coinbase stock traded to lows of $52.93 on Tuesday.

“Cathie Wood of $ARKK just sold nearly 1.41 million shares of Coinbase, $COIN, at all-time lows of $53. The average cost average that $ARKK purchased $COIN at was $254.65,” markets alert platform Unusual Whales tweeted on Wednesday.

Cathie Wood of $ARKK just sold nearly 1.41 million shares of Coinbase, $COIN, at all-time lows of $53.

The average cost average that $ARKK purchased $COIN at was $254.65.

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) July 27, 2022

Reportedly, one of the funds (ARK Innovation Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF)), or AARK, offloaded a total of 1,133,495 Coinbase shares. 

Meanwhile, the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW) dumped 174,611 COIN shares, and ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF) exited 110,218 of the crypto stock’s shares.

Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest had used the dip across the markets in 2022 to load up on Coinbase shares, buying over $20 million worth of COIN in January as she ditched Twitter (NYSE: TWTR), and adding another 500 million shares of the crypto stock in May.

COIN shares dump on negative news

The sale comes amid a sharp decline in the price of COIN after a combination of negative catalysts this week. Among these downside pressure drivers has been news that the leading cryptocurrency exchange is under probe from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for listing securities tokens.

Matt Smith, managing partner at Good Soil Investment Management, has noted the Ark’s offloading of the COIN stock could add to the sell pressure. The 1.4 million shares sale accounted for more than 5% of the total daily trading volume on Tuesday.

Wow. @ARKInvest sold 1.4M shares of $COIN today, representing over 5% of today’s total trading volume. $COIN was down 21% on news of an SEC probe, and I’m sure this sell pressure accelerated that slide quite a bit. pic.twitter.com/LW71XJt5jP

— Matt Smith (@nerdalert) July 27, 2022

“Ark had been heavily buying $COIN since it was listed at around $330. It closed today at $52.93. The flagship $ARKK fund had over 6M shares going into today, representing over 4% of the float. If they intend to liquidate all of this, that would be some serious sell pressure,” Smith added in a tweet.

Coinbase shares fell more than 21% in intraday trading on Tuesday, hitting its lowest price level of $52.93 at close. The stock however saw some upside afterhours and were poised near $55, up by about 4% post-market.