Cathie Wood snapped up shares of Tom Lee’s BitMine Immersion Technologies Inc., a US-listed Bitcoin miner that recently pivoted to pursue a treasury strategy tied to Ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency.
Wood’s Ark Investment Management purchased around 4.77 million of BitMine shares on July 21 across three funds, valued at $182 million, via a block trade done through the firm’s at-the-market stock issuance program. Proceeds from the sale will be used to buy Ether, BitMine said in a statement.
The shares are divided among Wood’s flagship $7.3 billion ARK Innovation ETF (ticker ARKK), the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW) and the ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF), according to the firm’s daily trading disclosures.
The move reflects a growing belief among some investors that Ether, long overshadowed by Bitcoin, is emerging as a financial building block, with steady returns, real-world utility, and rising demand from institutions.
“It will be interesting to see whether asset managers choose one ETH equity play, or a few within a given asset group, for diversification - there’s certainly more to choose from these days!” said Noelle Acheson, author of Crypto is Macro Now newsletter. “The next iteration will be, I imagine, treasury companies that buy a mix of assets, giving fund managers more diversification choices.”
BitMine counts Fundstrat co-founder Lee as its chairman. Last week, BitMine disclosed that Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund held a roughly 9% stake, signaling broader interest among longstanding crypto proponents in Ether’s growing role in institutional portfolios. Founders Fund was among the original participants in the June private placement.
BitMine last month announced plans to fund the treasury in a bet that Ether is becoming the next hot digital reserve asset for corporate balance sheets. Shares of the Las Vegas-based company were little changed at about $39.31 as of 10:50 a.m. in New York.
A spokesperson for Ark did not respond to a request for comment.
Ether has surged in recent weeks, buoyed by the launch of US exchange-traded funds and new rules supporting dollar-linked stablecoins.
Both Lee and Wood have championed crypto as a pillar of the next financial system, arguing that Ethereum, in particular, is evolving into core infrastructure for payments, tokenized assets and decentralized finance. In March, Wood reiterated her bullish view on larger, more established crypto assets and said use cases for Bitcoin, Ether and Solana are “multiplying.” The founder and CEO of Ark predicted Bitcoin will hit $1.5 million per coin by the 2030.
As a relentless wave of optimism sweeps across the nearly $4 trillion crypto market, dozens of treasury companies tracking cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether have been created in recent months, in an effort to replicate the success of Michael Saylor’s Strategy. An investment vehicle backed by Cantor Fitzgerald is working with Bitcoin pioneer Adam Back on a new treasury company that will be capitalized with about $3 billion in Bitcoin.
Ether slipped about 3.2% to $3,639 on Tuesday, halting a streak of nine consecutive daily gains in which it had rallied more than 25%. For the year, Ether is up around 9%, lagging Bitcoin’s 25% increase during the same period.
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