ETF.com’s “ETF of The Year” award went to the ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) for 2017. The award was given to ARKK for a number of reasons, but the top two were due to its exposure to disruptive technology in 2017 and its strong performance. Both of those key metrics for winning the award were partly due to the fund's exposure to Bitcoin.
ARKK owned Bitcoin through buying shares of the Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC). ARKK had anywhere between 6% and 10% of its assets in GBTC during 2017 while the cryptocurrency rose higher during the end of last year. During that time Bitcoin was often ARKK’s top holding. This helped the fund produce an 85% return for investors in 2017. Just for comparison, GBTC was up roughly 1,550% in 2017.
What’s more interesting though is that while GBTC is now down more than 65% year-to-date in 2018, ARKK is up more than 21% this year. The main reason for this reversal is because sometime in January of 2018 ARKK’s management team started selling their position in GBTC. As of today, ARKK still has a small position in GBTC, but it represents just 0.26% of the fund's assets.
ARK, the issuer of the ARKK ETF recently told ETF.com that it was a “complicated decision” to cut its Bitcoin investments, but that it was driven largely by regulatory and tax concerns, more so than the true “merits” of Bitcoin. Continue reading "Bitcoin Helped ARK Win 'Top ETF' in 2017"
