Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest Buys $30 Million in Circle Shares Ahead of Potential Arc Token

Ark Invest, the investment firm of tech investor Cathie Wood, has raised more than $30 million in shares of stablecoin issuer Circle (CRCL) on Wednesday, the firm said.

The firm added 353,328 total shares of CRCL in three of its actively managed ETFs, and now holds nearly 3 million total shares valued at approximately $255 million.

Arca’s latest purchase comes amid a sharp drop in Circle’s share price, which is down more than 20% in the last 5 trading days. CRCL recently changed hands at $86.21, about even on the day shortly after the opening bell on Thursday.

The recent slide has extended further over the course of the last month, dropping 37% in that time and now relegating CRCL to a mark that has not been held since its initial trading day after its massively successful IPO.

The actions of the issuer USDC tripled from the IPO price of $31 on the first dayearning several stops of the trade due to the upward volatility. It then rose further, creating a record high of just shy of $300 per share.

The slide comes despite the fact that Circle beat analysts’ forecasts in Q3, posting $740 million in quarterly revenue — a 66% year-over-year increase. The signature opened the testnet for its stablecoin-specific Arc blockchain network last month, and teased a potential native token as part of its Q3 report.

Wood’s CRCL dip buy reflects his firm’s actions since last week, when shares acquired of Ethereum treasure company BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) amid a wider slide in its share price. The firm added about $9 million of BitMine, expanding its exposure to about $260 million despite the fact that BMNR fell around 30% in the last month.

The firm also maintains exposure to other crypto-related stocks, such as Robinhood (HOOD) and Coinbase (COIN), and operates its own Bitcoin ETF.

Wood famously predicted that Bitcoin reach a price of about $ 1.5 million per coin by 2030, but the last week he cut his goal to $1.2 million due to the rapid growth of stablecoin usage.

Bitcoin has fallen around 0.6% in the last 24 hours and is now trading at $101,128. Predictors on Myriad Markets-a product of Decrypt’s parent company, Dastan, gives the largest crypto asset by market capitalization a 62% chance. of pumping to $115,000 before it drops to $85,000.