Ark Invest founder and CEO Cathie Wood passed on buying the first Bitcoin futures ETF citing an investigation into tax ramifications as one of Ark Invest’s reasons for withholding for now.
According to Business Insider, Ark Invest founder and CEO Cathie Wood did not invest in the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy Exchange Traded Fund, or ETF, on its first day of trading.
Wood had this to say regarding the ETF’s debut:
“No, we did not [invest]. We’re looking at this very carefully […] there are some tax ramifications we’d like to understand more having to do with contango versus more normal backwardation.”
When the future price of a commodity is greater than the present price, the ETF is said to be in contango. In a negative trend, backwardation occurs when the forward price of a futures contract is lower than the spot price.
Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest teamed up with 21 Shares to file for its own Bitcoin ETF in June. When it comes to investing in cryptocurrencies, she is also no stranger to the stock market.
Ark Investment Management, one of her funds, has been permitted to invest in Canada’s Bitcoin ETF, the Ark Next Generation ETF.
Ark Invest has 8.3 million shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), with Bitcoin and Ethereum accounting for a sizable portion of the firm’s holdings.
Ark Invest also added Coinbase stock to three of its ETFs in the spring: the Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK), the Ark Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW), and the Ark Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF).
Wood stated that she is on the lookout for the next FAANG investment that will benefit her investors. FAANG is an abbreviation for the five largest American technology companies: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google. Jim Cramer was the first to invent the phrase FANG in 2013.
On its first day of trading, the Bitcoin Strategy ETF recorded the largest natural volume of any ETF ever, as well as the second-highest total volume of any ETF.
