Ark Investment tips $20M into Grayscale Ethereum Trust

Cathie Wood's Ark Investment has reported holdings of 639,069 shares in Grayscale's Ethereum Trust for Q1 — currently worth around $20.9 million at today’s prices.

ARK Investment has bought 639,069 shares of the Grayscale Ethereum Trust. pic.twitter.com/ofXD5F7QpA

— Documenting Ethereum (@DocumentEther) May 18, 2021

The news of Ark’s major investment into Ethereum was seen as a bullish sign by Ethereum and DeFi proponents. Mythos Capital founder and Bankless author Ryan Adams emphasized how significant he saw the development:

“Remember when you told you the institutions would never buy ETH? They keep underestimating this asset. ETH IS MONEY.”

Ether bulls have been growing noticeably more confident recently, with the co-founder of venture capital firm Framework Ventures, Vance Spencer tweeting earlier today:

“There were many times when crypto would not have been strong enough to survive without BTC as the dominant narrative. I no longer believe this is the case. Regime change is coming.”

Cointelegraph reported on May 5 that institutional managers bought $30.2 million worth of Ethereum at the end of April, bringing their total holdings to an all-time high of $13.9 billion.

Despite the excitement around the ETH buy, Ark’s Q1 filing with SEC earlier this month shows the firm's portfolio still heavily leans in Bitcoin’s favor. Ark reported holdings of 8.6 million shares in Grayscale's Bitcoin Trust, worth more than $298 million as of today.

Data from TradingView however shows that Grayscale’s ETH Trust has been much more lucrative compared to Grayscale’s Bitcoin trust in 2021.  

The share price of Grayscale's ETH Trust, or ETHE, has increased by 179% this year, up from $11.70 on Jan. 4, to $32.70 as of today. The share price of Grayscale's BTC Trust, or GBTC, has increased by a mere 1.7% in the same time frame, up from $33.80 on Jan. 4, to around $34.38 today. GBTC has been trading at a 15-20% discount to its Bitcoin holdings.

Cathie Wood and Ark Investments don’t share the same environmental concerns as expressed recently by Elon Musk and Tesla.

In a May 17 newsletter published by the firm, Ark questioned how well Elon Musk had done his research on the topic, noting that “Tesla’s decision seems to have been triggered by private equity firm Greenidge’s plans to revive a coal power plant to mine Bitcoin.”

The firm highlighted that Greenidge had clarified not only that its plant is powered by natural gas and feeds the grid but also that it bought carbon credits to offset the emissions:

“In our view, the concerns around Bitcoin’s energy consumption are misguided. Contrary to consensus thinking, we believe the impact of Bitcoin mining could become a net positive to the environment.”

According to news outlet Bazinga on May 18, Ark also recently added another 259,897 Coinbase shares to its holdings via the Ark Innovation ETF and the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF — worth more than $62 million at today’s price of around $241.