Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest has once again invested in its own ARK 21Shares Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), with a significant purchase totaling $15 million. According to Ark Invest Daily, on January 18, the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW) acquired 365,695 shares of the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB). Considering the closing price on Thursday at $40.95, this recent acquisition holds an approximate value of $15 million.
Ark Invest Allocating Funds to Its Bitcoin ETF to Gain Scale
On January 16th, ARKW made a significant move by purchasing 365,427 shares of ARKB, which accounted for 1% of ARKW’s overall holdings. This action took place on the same day when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) granted approval for Bitcoin ETFs, ensuring that no ETF had an early advantage due to this decision. Nevertheless, the strategic transfer of funds from one fund to another is seen as a move to potentially bolster the ETF’s prospects.
Bloomberg Intelligence has suggested that Ark Invest’s decision to allocate its own capital into ARKB is a strategic maneuver aimed at rapidly increasing the ETF’s scale. With all the approved funds holding the same underlying asset, the SEC’s approval has set the stage for a high-stakes competition among them.
The scale of the spot Bitcoin ETF holds significant importance, particularly for financial advisers and platforms, many of which have minimum-asset requirements. This strategic move is aimed at positioning ARKB effectively in this competitive landscape.
Cathie Wood: Bitcoin Network is Larger than Amazon, Google, and Microsoft Combined
Ark Invest’s Director of Digital Assets, Yassine Elmandjra, has shared a remarkable update on social media, revealing that Bitcoin’s hash rate has reached an unprecedented milestone of 500 exahashes per second.
To put this astonishing figure into perspective, Elmandjra drew some striking comparisons: “For every star in our galaxy, the Bitcoin network is performing 5 billion computations per second; It would take approximately 2000 years for the entire global population, with each person performing one hash per second, to equal the hash rate of the Bitcoin network.”
He went on to highlight another astounding fact, stating, “The Bitcoin network executes approximately 67 times more hashes per second than there are grains of sand on Earth. In terms of raw operations per second, Bitcoin surpasses the world’s most powerful supercomputer by a factor of about 500.”
Elmandjra concluded with a pointed remark, emphasizing that despite such overwhelming evidence of its strength, there are still skeptics who claim that “bitcoin is backed by nothing.”
Cathie Wood, the founder of Ark Invest, endorsed Elmandjra’s post and added her perspective, stating, “Bitcoin is supported by the largest computer network in the world, a network that dwarfs the combined size of the cloud infrastructures built by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft over the past 15-20 years.”
