Cathie Wood Makes Another Move: $3 Billion Bottom-Fishing of USDC Issuer—What Signal Does This Send?

An interesting event happened yesterday—Cathie Wood, founder of Ark Invest, snapped up Circle stock through three of her ETFs, spending $305 million. The timing is quite intriguing.

Why dare to increase holdings when the stock price is plummeting?

Circle stock plunged 12.2% on Wednesday, closing at $86.3, but Wood chose to act at this very moment. Her three funds joined forces:

• ARK Innovation ETF bought 245,000 shares
• ARK Next Generation Internet ETF added 70,000 shares
• ARK Fintech Innovation ETF bought another 37,000 shares

Why such aggressive moves? Just look at Circle’s financials—Q3 revenue reached $740 million, up 66% year-over-year; net profit hit $214 million, a 202% surge. USDC’s quarterly transaction volume soared to $73.7 billion, doubling year-over-year.

With data this explosive, yet the stock price dropped—this is a classic case of being unjustly punished by the market.

Irrational market creates buying opportunities

Investment bank William Blair also gave a recommendation on Wednesday: now is the time to buy the dip, rating Circle as “outperform.” Their reasoning is that Circle holds a “winner-takes-all” position in stablecoin infrastructure.

But don’t ignore the risks—regulatory uncertainty, rising competition, and pressure from falling interest rates are all present.

Circle’s new move: preparing to issue a token?

Circle also revealed that it’s exploring the possibility of issuing a native token for its Arc blockchain. Arc is their flagship stablecoin L1 chain, which just launched its public testnet last month. If they really do issue a token, what will it mean? Ecosystem incentives, participation thresholds, governance rights… it all depends on how they design it.

Industry Insight: When institutional investors put real money on the table, it usually means they’re seeing something retail investors haven’t noticed yet. USDC’s transaction volume and the potential of the stablecoin sector are definitely worth watching.