Cathie Wood Leans Into USDC – Trims Bullish
Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest spent two sessions adding Coinbase and Circle while selling Bullish, tilting its crypto holdings toward USDC reserve income days before Circle reports quarterly results.
Key Takeaways
- ARK sold 342,545 Bullish shares across two sessions
- Coinbase transaction revenue fell 44% year over year
- Circle’s Q2 reserve return rate fell 66 basis points
- Circle reports third-quarter results on November 4
ARK’s trade notice for Monday, November 2, lists the purchases and sales across its ARKK, ARKW and ARKF funds, extending a matching set of trades that Investing.com reported from ARK’s October 30 disclosure.
The buying landed between two earnings reports
| Stock | Fri, Oct 30 | Mon, Nov 2 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coinbase (COIN)▲ Bought | 39,418 | 24,790 | 64,208 |
| Circle (CRCL)▲ Bought | 74,894 | 35,657 | 110,551 |
| Bullish (BLSH)▼ Sold | 238,373 | 104,172 | 342,545 |
Coinbase has already published its third-quarter 10-Q, so ARK added to the exchange with its latest stablecoin figures on the table. Circle’s numbers follow on November 4 and Bullish’s on November 18. ARK added to Circle with that company’s results two days away and reduced Bullish more than two weeks before its next report.
How much of each business rides on USDC
Where each company’s revenue comes from
Circle · Q2 2026
≈95%
of total revenue and reserve income came from USDC reserve income
Coinbase · Q3 2026
26.4%
of net revenue came from stablecoins
Bullish · Q2 2026
68%
of adjusted revenue came from subscriptions, services and other lines
Coinbase’s third-quarter 10-Q shows the stablecoin line carrying more weight than it did a year ago. Stablecoin revenue slipped about 5% to $306.9 million, while transaction revenue dropped 44% to $590.2 million. Because trading shrank far faster, stablecoins went from roughly 18% of net revenue in the third quarter of 2025 to more than a quarter of it now.
Circle sits at the far end of that scale. Its second-quarter results showed $701 million in total revenue and reserve income, up 7% from a year earlier, with reserves generating nearly all of it. Keeping that income is another matter: distribution, transaction and other costs took $412 million, close to 59 cents of every revenue dollar, mostly in payments to distribution partners.
Owning both ends of the same payment
A large part of those distribution payments goes to Coinbase, an arrangement Coindoo breaks down in its explainer on how Circle and Coinbase share USDC income. For ARK, that changes what the two purchases add up to. Money leaving Circle as a distribution cost reappears as Coinbase stablecoin revenue, so holding both stocks means sharing one income pool rather than doubling a bet on it. A shift in how the two companies split that income has less effect on a holder of both than a change in the size of the pool.
The pool depends on two things: how much USDC is outstanding and what its reserves earn. In Circle’s second quarter, those pulled in opposite directions. Average USDC in circulation grew 25% year over year, yet reserve income rose only 5% because the reserve return rate fell 66 basis points.
That is the strongest case against the trade. Larger balances do not translate into larger income when short-term rates fall, and both stocks carry the same rate exposure. Holding Circle and Coinbase together concentrates that risk rather than spreading it.
The Bullish that ARK is selling is changing shape
Bullish earns its money very differently. In its second quarter, the company reported $92.6 million in adjusted revenue, a non-IFRS measure. Of that, $29.9 million came from transactions, and the rest from subscriptions, services and other lines such as CoinDesk data, indices, media and liquidity services.
That mix is set to change if a pending acquisition closes. In May, Bullish agreed to buy transfer agent Equiniti in a $4.2 billion deal made up of $1.85 billion in assumed debt and about $2.35 billion in Bullish stock. On the investor call filed with the SEC, management put the stock portion at roughly 61 million new shares. Bullish’s October 28 filing calculated its fully diluted share count near 156 million, so the deal would add new shares equal to about 39% of that base. Closing is expected in January 2027, subject to regulatory approvals.
ARK has bought Bullish before, including purchases Coindoo covered in September 2025. The latest sales cut into a company whose revenue base, share count and core business could look substantially different a year from now.
Where the three positions now sit in ARKK
ARKK portfolio weight, November 2 holdings
ARK’s November 2 holdings file shows the two USDC-linked names together carrying more than five times Bullish’s weight in the flagship fund. Because weights also move with share prices, the file shows where the positions stand rather than how much two days of buying added.
What Circle’s November 4 numbers can confirm
Circle reports on November 4, with a webcast at 8 a.m. ET. Its third quarter covers the same July-to-September period as Coinbase’s 10-Q, so both sides of the USDC split can be read against each other.
Three lines to read in Circle’s Q3 report
- Reserve income against a year earlier. If it grew while Coinbase’s stablecoin revenue shrank, Coinbase took a smaller slice. If it fell as well, lower yields shrank the pool itself.
- Average USDC against the reserve return rate. Whether balance growth outpaced the yield decline that held Q2 reserve income to single-digit growth.
- Distribution costs as a share of revenue. Movement here shows whether partners are capturing more or less of each reserve dollar, which shifts value between ARK’s two holdings without changing their combined pool.
If Circle’s reserve income holds up as rates decline, the USDC tilt in ARK’s latest trades has firmer support. If yields erase the balance growth again, both new positions face the same pressure at once.
Kosta has reported on cryptocurrency markets and blockchain infrastructure since 2020, bringing over six years of hands-on experience in the crypto industry built through daily tracking of markets, trends, and emerging blockchain developments. Specializing in Bitcoin on-chain analysis, institutional ETF flows, and digital asset price action, his work at Coindoo has been cited by other news agencies and consistently covers market developments with a focus on data-driven reporting across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP. Over the years, Kosta has contributed to multiple crypto media outlets in different regions, authoring over 6,000 articles across the sector. His reporting spans cryptocurrency markets and the broader fintech industry, tracking not only price action but also the technological and regulatory forces shaping the ecosystem. To support his analysis, Kosta actively leverages on-chain data and metrics from leading platforms such as Santiment, Glassnode, and CryptoQuant, enabling deeper, evidence-based market insights. He believes in the power of transparency and the data that underpins the blockchain ecosystem. His academic background in Marketing Management from Denmark further complements his analytical approach, adding a strong understanding of communication strategy and content positioning to his work.
