TradingKey - On the eve of the Clarity Act vote, Cathie Wood offloads crypto stocks en masse, cashing out over $60 million.
On Monday (September 14) Eastern Time, driven by the impending vote on the Clarity Act, crypto concept stocks staged a broad rally. Among them, Coinbase (COIN) surged over 9%, Circle (CRCL) and Bullish (BLSH) both gained over 7%, while Bitmine (BMNR) rose about 3%.
Coinbase stock price chart, Source: TradingView
As crypto stocks surged, Cathie Wood's Ark Invest offloaded a substantial amount of related shares. According to The Block, Ark Invest sold over $13 million in Circle, $7 million in Coinbase, nearly $4 million in Bitmine, and $700,000 in Bullish shares, while also dumping around $40 million of a spot Bitcoin ETF—the Ark 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB). These moves sparked market attention and raised questions over whether the firm is bearish on the upcoming vote on the Clarity Act.
September 14 marked the most critical day of revisions and negotiation ahead of the Senate vote on the bill, as Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis and others released the latest final text of the legislation. To secure key Democratic votes, the draft incorporated Democratic proposals regarding conflict-of-interest restrictions on crypto assets for public officials and the president, including requiring crypto holdings to be placed in blind trusts. Additionally, Donald Trump's team agreed to these new ethical provisions at the last minute, paving the way for the inclusion of more than 120 Democratic revision requests in the bill.
Spurred by Republican concessions and progress in bipartisan negotiations, prediction market Polymarket showed that the probability of the Clarity Act officially passing into law within 2026 jumped sharply, spiking at one point on September 14 from the original 14%–18% to 30%–33%, driving a collective rally in cryptocurrencies and related concept stocks.
However, the core reason behind Ark Invest's selling of certain crypto concept stocks lies in its funds' risk control mechanisms and rebalancing strategies at high valuation levels, rather than a bearish view on the bill or crypto market fundamentals. Ark's ETFs operate under strict risk management rules, typically capping single-stock holdings at around 10% of total assets. When stock prices surge on positive news, the holding weight is passively elevated, forcing fund managers to trim positions to remain in compliance.
It should be emphasized that Ark is far from bearish on the bill; rather, it views the legislation as an important catalyst driving Bitcoin and the crypto ecosystem toward institutionalization. Cathie Wood and the Ark Invest team have publicly stated multiple times that the Clarity Act clarifies the regulatory division of responsibility between the CFTC and SEC, making it a key bill to eliminate the single largest obstacle to institutional money entering the market.
Although Cathie Wood and her team maintain a positive stance, it does not mean the bill is guaranteed to pass in today's vote, as it still faces opposition. Notably, Elizabeth Warren, the ranking Democrat on the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, explicitly voiced her opposition yesterday, citing that the latest ethics provisions still contain major loopholes that fail to prevent President Donald Trump from profiting from it.
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