Cathie Wood Buys More Coinbase Shares on the Cheap

Noted growth investor Cathie Wood's ARK Invest made its largest investment in crypto exchange Coinbase's (COIN) stock since Dec. 14 on Thursday, adding about $5.5 million of the shares, based on closing prices.

The firm bought more than 158,000 shares for its ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF). While the firm has added smaller amounts of the stock in recent days, on Dec. 14 it about purchased a total of almost 300,000 shares at a closing-price cost of about $12 million. Those were allocated mainly to the ARK Innovation Exchange-Traded Fund (ARKK).

Coinbase's stock closed at $34.78 in New York Thursday, up roughly 7%. The shares have fallen 86% this year.

The stock has underperformed both bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH). Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is down 65% this year, and ether has dropped by 66%.

In late November, Wood continued to demonstrate her bitcoin conviction by purchasing 176,945 shares ($1.5 million) of Grayscale's Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). The shares were recently trading at a 48% discount to the net asset value of bitcoin.

Grayscale is owned by Digital Currency Group, which is also CoinDesk's parent company.

A trade report email from Dec. 30 shows that Wood also purchased 22,514 shares of Tesla's (TSLA) stock for ARK's Innovation ETF, worth about $2.74 million. Tesla's stock is down around 69% this year.

CORRECTION (Dec. 30, 10:00 UTC): Removes incorrect reference to date of most recent purchase from first paragraph; adds historical perspective on yesterday's purchase.