Ark Invest scoops more Circle, BitMine, and Coinbase as Bitcoin revisits 15-month lows

Bitcoin’s weekend dip wasn’t a deterrent for Ark Invest—it was an entry signal. After BTC slid to a 15-month low of $75,442 on Sunday before rebounding near $79,000 Monday and fading again to $74,618 Tuesday, Cathie Wood’s team increased exposure across a set of crypto-linked equities and its spot Bitcoin ETF.

On Monday, Ark bought more than $8.7 million of Circle (CRCL) and over $6 million of BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) across its actively managed ETFs. It also added to Coinbase (COIN), Bullish (BLSH), Solana treasury firm Brera Holdings (SLMT), and its own spot Bitcoin ETF, ARKB. The firm now holds nearly $248 million of CRCL and $228 million of BMNR—its 15th and 16th largest positions—and $425 million of COIN, currently its 7th largest. Circle and BitMine shares fell again Tuesday and are each down more than 20% over the last five sessions, while Coinbase and Bullish slid 15.74% and 23% over the past week, respectively.

Ark’s behavior fits a pattern. In November, the firm bought more than $9 million of BMNR around $38; the stock now trades near $21.78—its weakest level since last July, when BitMine unveiled an Ethereum treasury strategy that briefly sent the shares up more than 400% in a single day. Wood, meanwhile, has pushed back on AI-bubble worries, arguing the excess is more evident in precious metals like gold, which have lately drawn capital away from risk assets such as Bitcoin. She remains bullish on BTC with a 2030 target of up to $1.2 million per coin—trimmed roughly 20% from a prior $1.5 million view given the growing role of stablecoins.

The interesting thread here isn’t simply that Ark “bought the dip.” It’s the tilt toward balance-sheet businesses that monetize crypto’s plumbing, not just its price. Circle’s earnings are tied to the stablecoin float and short-duration T-bills—income that can persist even when token prices soften. BitMine’s pivot to an Ethereum treasury makes the company a leveraged holder of on-chain assets with corporate discretion around accumulation, NAV signaling, and liquidity. Pair that with Coinbase and Bullish—exchanges with transactional exposure to volatility—and Ark is effectively constructing a barbell: cash-flow proxies on one side, beta to activity and adoption on the other, with ARKB anchoring pure Bitcoin exposure.

That mix has a psychological and business logic. Investors often overreact to price declines in anything “crypto-adjacent,” compressing multiples indiscriminately. Firms like Circle tend to see fundamentals tracked more by interest rates and stablecoin adoption than by week-to-week BTC moves. Accumulating into that mismatch can be rational if you can stomach time and mark-to-market pain. It also reinforces Ark’s brand as a buyer during stress, which can be self-reinforcing for ETF flows.

There are trade-offs. Equity proxies introduce governance and execution risk—BitMine’s treasury strategy is ultimately an operating decision, not a protocol guarantee. Liquidity can vanish in drawdowns, as the 20%+ weekly slides in CRCL and BMNR show. And if stablecoin growth redirects demand from BTC as a store of value—a view Wood has partially acknowledged by trimming her long-term target—the portfolio must earn its keep through cash generation and optionality, not just narrative.

Ark isn’t chasing headlines here; it’s leaning into infrastructure economics. If the thesis is right, periods when prices sag but rails keep humming may be when the asymmetry is best.