Ark Invest Floats New Crypto Fund as Markets Roil

Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest has raised $16 million for a new fund, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Wednesday. The ARK Crypto Revolutions Fund, registered in the U.S. and the Cayman Islands, is a private placement, meaning that it won’t be available to the public.

Private placements are usually sold to a small group of friends and family, accredited investors or institutional clients. The firm said in the filing that it started raising money on March 1 and has so far sold $7 million in the U.S. and $9 million in the Cayman Islands as of March 15.

Ark Invest did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Decrypt.

The new fund is another sign that the Florida-based investment manager still feels bullish about Bitcoin and crypto markets. Her Ark Innovation exchange-traded fund (ETF) drew nearly $400 million on Friday, according to Bloomberg, the largest increase since April 2021 and coming as the financial sector was rocked by bank failures.

Crypto-friendly Silvergate Bank announced it was voluntarily winding down last week and Silicon Valley Bank, which counted hundreds of tech startups as clients, was shuttered by regulators on Friday. On Sunday, Signature Bank—at the time, the only remaining crypto-friendly bank with an instant settlement network for digital payments—was forced to close by the New York Department of Financial Services.

Wood has been vocal in calling out what she sees as regulators’ misplaced focus on the risks of blockchain technology and crypto markets as questions loom about the stability of the financial sector.

“While the US banking system was seizing up in response to bank runs threatening regional banks, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other crypto networks didn’t skip a beat,” Wood wrote on Twitter Tuesday. “Instability in the banking system threatened stablecoins, the on-ramps to DeFi, in stark contrast to regulator rhetoric.”

Wood herself, who’s long been a champion for Bitcoin, said she sees it as an insurance policy during an interview in February.

“There’s hyperinflation all over the world as their currencies have fallen apart,” Wood told Yahoo Finance last month. “Those populations need a fallback—an insurance policy like Bitcoin.”

Since the start of the year, the company has bought almost $20 million worth of Coinbase shares and now owns 5.14% of the company’s stock, according to SEC filings.