Cathie Wood Just Bought More of the Company Behind Your USDC
ARK Invest spent over $54M on Circle, SpaceX and Nvidia stock in one day — here's why the USDC issuer bet matters to stablecoin holders.
If you hold USDC, a name you might not expect just got a vote of confidence from one of Wall Street’s most-watched fund managers. Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest spent more than $54.6 million in a single trading session on August 5, buying shares of SpaceX, Nvidia and Circle Internet Group — the company that issues the USDC stablecoin millions of crypto users hold every day.
The purchases were spread across five ARK exchange-traded funds — ARKK, ARKQ, ARKW, ARKF and ARKX — according to Blockonomi and CoinGape, both of which tracked the trades. Circle wasn’t even the biggest buy of the day, but for anyone holding stablecoins, it’s the most relevant part of the story.
Why ARK bought Circle even after a soft earnings print
ARK picked up 273,343 Circle shares worth roughly $17.30 million at the day’s closing price of $63.28, with the stock finishing almost flat, up just 0.05%. That’s notable timing, because Circle had just reported second-quarter revenue of $701 million — a touch below what Wall Street was expecting.
But the underlying numbers weren’t all bad news. Circle’s earnings per share came in at $0.18 and net income hit $48 million, both beating analyst forecasts. Following this latest purchase, Circle has become one of ARK’s top five holdings by buying volume, according to Blockonomi — a sign Wood’s team sees the stablecoin issuer as a long-term bet rather than a one-off trade.
For everyday USDC holders, this matters because it’s a reminder that the coin sitting in your wallet is backed by a publicly traded, earnings-reporting company — not an anonymous project. When institutional money keeps buying into that company despite a mixed quarter, it’s a signal of confidence in the business model behind the stablecoin, even if it says nothing directly about the token’s peg or safety.
SpaceX and Nvidia rounded out the buying spree
SpaceX was actually ARK’s largest purchase of the day: 181,830 shares worth about $19.69 million at a closing price of $108.27, even as the stock dropped 13.61% in the session. That dip came despite SpaceX posting second-quarter revenue of $7.8 billion — nearly double the $4.1 billion it made a year earlier — alongside a $541 million net loss that was still better than analysts had feared.
Nvidia rounded things out with 80,415 shares bought for around $17.63 million at $219.22, with the stock actually climbing 3.43% that day. Nvidia hasn’t reported its latest quarterly numbers yet — that’s due August 26, with analysts penciling in revenue between $91.71 billion and $91.91 billion and earnings above $2.08 per share. ARK has reportedly been building its Nvidia position for several weeks running, betting on continued demand for chips from AI developers and cloud providers.
The bigger picture for crypto watchers
None of these three companies are pure crypto plays — SpaceX isn’t even on a public exchange in the traditional sense and trades through private market channels like Nasdaq Private Market. But Circle’s inclusion alongside AI and aerospace giants shows how stablecoin infrastructure is increasingly being treated as mainstream fintech by big traditional investors, not a niche crypto sideshow.
That’s a useful data point if you’re holding USDC or watching the stablecoin sector more broadly: institutional money is still willing to buy into Circle through earnings wobbles, treating short-term misses as noise rather than a red flag. As always, a fund manager’s stock purchase isn’t financial advice for your own crypto holdings — but it is one more sign that the line between “crypto company” and “regular public company” keeps getting blurrier.
Read more: Your USDC Just Got New Backers: BlackRock, Visa and Mastercard Join Circle’s Arc
