Ark Invest said it bought more than 2.5 million shares of crypto platform Bullish (BLSH) on the day of the company’s explosive debut on the New York Stock Exchange, securing a stake valued at more than $170 million by the end of the day.
Shares of the company, which owns CoinDesk, surged to as high as $102 from the $37 IPO pricing, before closing at $68, an 84% gain. The company sold 20.3 million shares for its initial public offering, which had also attracted interest from BlackRock (BLK), according to a filing with the SEC.
Ark added 1,714,522 BLSH shares to its flagship ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK), 545,416 shares to the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW) and 272,755 shares to the ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF).
Bullish’s rally extended into Thursday, recently trading 15% higher. That performance comes as the broader crypto market slipped, erasing part of the prior day’s gains when bitcoin (BTC) hit a record high of $124,000. The CoinDesk 20 Index is down about 2.1% over the past 24 hours.
Other recently listed crypto-related stocks fell. Circle (CRCL), which went public in June, fell about 2% Thursday, while trading platform eToro (ETOR) dropped nearly 3%.
Wood has a track record of making sizable early moves in newly public crypto firms. Upon Circle’s IPO, Ark purchased about 4.5 million shares, valued at roughly $373 million at the time.
Those shares are now worth about $675 million. Her stake in eToro is smaller — around 140,000 shares — currently valued at $6.5 million.
Bullish’s strong debut and Ark’s rapid allocation across multiple ETFs highlight growing investor interest in publicly traded crypto infrastructure companies, even as market volatility remains high.