Ark trims its own Bitcoin ETF and adds to Circle as BTC grinds below $80,000

Cathie Wood's Ark Invest bought 65,615 shares of Circle Internet Group (CRCL) on Monday — worth about $5.2 million — for its ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW), while selling roughly $15.9 million of its own ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) across two of its funds, The Block reported, citing Ark's disclosures. Bitcoin was changing hands near $79,625 on Tuesday morning, still below the $80,000 line it has struggled to hold.

Ark frames the moves as routine rebalancing, not a directional call. The firm caps any single position at 10% of a fund to maintain diversification, which means it trims winners and tops up laggards as relative weights drift. On that mechanical logic, selling ARKB after a run and buying more Circle after a drop is consistent housekeeping rather than a change of conviction — a distinction worth keeping in view before reading the trade as a verdict on bitcoin.

The numbers, per The Block's account of Ark's filings and its ETF Tracker: as of Oct. 27, Circle is ARKW's fifth-largest holding at a 4.3% weighting, about $67.8 million, behind Tesla, Meta, Shopify and Amazon. ARKB remains a top-10 allocation in both ARKW (3.7%, ~$58.2 million) and the ARK Fintech Innovation ETF, ARKF (3.8%, ~$29.1 million). ARKB has drawn roughly $1.1 billion in net inflows since its January 2024 launch and holds about $2.5 billion in assets.

Key facts

• Ark bought 65,615 Circle shares (~$5.2M) for ARKW on Monday; sold ~$15.9M of ARKB from two funds (The Block, citing Ark disclosures).
• Circle (CRCL) fell 7.1% Monday to close at $79.84, down 1.2% year-to-date; off a further ~1.1% in Tuesday pre-market (The Block CRCL page; TradingView).
• Bitcoin ~$79,625 Tuesday, down 8.7% from an early-October high near $87,200 (The Block).
• ARKB: ~$1.1B net inflows since Jan. 2024, ~$2.5B AUM (The Block ETF Tracker).
• U.S. Federal Reserve rate decision due Wednesday.

The real-world read

This is one outlet's reporting off Ark's own disclosures and The Block's trackers; the share and dollar figures aren't independently corroborated here, and the inflow/AUM numbers trace to The Block's tooling, not a primary filing. The 10% cap is real, but "it's just rebalancing" is still Ark's framing — the firm buying more of a stablecoin issuer while trimming direct bitcoin exposure is a fact; the motive is inference. Note the interested parties among the commentary: Derive CEO Nick Forster says $80,000 is the most-active bitcoin options strike on his platform, with puts at 91% of ~$32 million traded there over the past week — a data point from his own exchange about his own order flow. LMAX's Joel Kruger pins the weakness on macro — Middle East tensions, oil, thin weekend trading, leveraged liquidations — and argues the drop isn't a fundamental shift; that's his read, not established fact.

Not financial advice.

Sources

• The Block (Tier 2, secondary) — the trade sizes, fund weightings, Circle and bitcoin prices, ARKB inflow/AUM figures, and quotes from LMAX's Joel Kruger and Derive's Nick Forster. Standard news reporting, not sponsored; underlying figures attributed to Ark's disclosures, The Block's CRCL and ETF Tracker pages, and TradingView.