Cathie Wood-led Ark Invest has invested $20 million in Grayscale Ethereum Trust (OTC:ETHE) on top of an investment in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (OTC:GBTC), according to the fund’s 13F filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
What Happened: Ark holds 639,069 shares of the Grayscale Ethereum Trust, valued at $20.91 million calculated as per Tuesday’s closing value of $32.72 per share.
The investment management firm also holds 8.67 million shares of Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust valued at nearly $298.07 million calculated at Tuesday’s closing price of $34.38.
While Ark’s exposure to the Bitcoin Trust is higher than the Ethereum Trust, the year-to-date returns of the latter have been more impressive.
ETHE has returned 111.1% since the year began, while GBTC has risen 7.4% in the same period.
Why It Matters: The underlying assets of the two Ark-held Grayscale funds — Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) — have risen 41.47% and 332.54% respectively.
At press time, BTC traded 9.37% lower at $40,892.19, while ETH traded 6.55% lower at $3,178.47 on a 24-hour trailing basis.
Ethereum soared beyond the psychologically important $4,000 mark, touching an all-time high of $4,362.35 a week ago — buoyed by both the decentralized finance (DeFi) segment and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Bitcoin has fallen 28.75% over the course of the last seven days after Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk said the automaker would stop accepting payments in the cryptocurrency due to environmental concerns.
Ark is an investor in both Tesla and, indirectly through Grayscale’s fund, in Bitcoin. The company’s Director of Research Brett Winton termed the apex cryptocurrency a “novel economic institution” last week.
As per Winton, Bitcoin’s economic potential “far outweighs the cost of the energy required to maintain it.”
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