ARK’s exchange-traded funds (ETFs) purchased $13.2 million worth of Coinbase shares this week, taking its total amount bought in February to $30 million. The move, which marks ARK’s single-biggest COIN investment this year, sent the company’s shares up over 3% in premarket, along with buzz over the firm’s new L2 blockchain.

ARK Funds Bought $13.2M COIN This Week

An investor email showed that Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest purchased an additional $13.2 million worth of Coinbase stock. Shares of Coinbase were up more than 3% in premarket trading Thursday.

The firm’s ARK Innovation ETF bought 181,972 Coinbase shares, worth around $11.4 million, while its Next Generation Internet ETF added 31,547 shares for $1.93 million. The first purchase marks the single-largest order of COIN shares in 2023, exceeding the $9.2 million the investment manager bought earlier this month.

The latest purchases, totaling 213,519 shares, are almost double what ARK bought last week. Wood’s ARK has been one of Coinbase’s biggest shareholders for a while now, but the fund bought more than $30 million of the crypto exchange’s shares in February alone.

Meanwhile, the 67-year-old investor and =21Shares have been trying to register a spot bitcoin ETF for over a year. However, their latest proposal to launch such a fund was rejected by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last month.

Coinbase’s Bullish Start to 2023

ARK’s new investments in Coinbase come two days after the crypto exchange reported Q4 earnings that beat analysts’ expectations. The company reported better-than-expected earnings per share (EPS) and revenue figures for the fourth quarter. Still, its user numbers fell short of consensus estimates, sending its shares in the red on Tuesday.

Nevertheless, the exchange’s stock has delivered an impressive performance in 2023, with its share price doubling from around $34 to $81 in January. The stock has slightly declined since reaching that high, though it is still up more than 80% year-to-date.

This marks an impressive rebound from 2022, during which the company’s stock lost around 86% of its value. The crypto exchange reported a $1.1 billion loss for Q2 2022 and a substantial revenue decline amid crypto winter.

As a result of a challenging 2022, Coinbase announced a series of layoffs at the start of January, affecting up to 900 employees. But analysts remained confident that Coinbase sits in an excellent position to weather the persisting market downturn thanks to its “premium brand” and a “healthy balance sheet.”

This article originally appeared on The Tokenist

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