Cathie Wood reveals strategy to outsmart Wall Street
Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood is bagging Ethereum treasury companies, days after she dumped Robinhood and Coinbase stocks.
In a tweet on July 26, Wood responded to the sudden demand to unstake Ethereum, asked by Brett Winton, chief futurist at Ark Invest.
According to an analysis by Galaxy, Ethereum saw a massive spike in 'unstaking' activity beginning July 16. In just six days, the number of validators trying to exit the Ethereum network's staking system rose from about 1,920 to over 475,000. That's a 24,000% increase — and it caused the average wait time for a validator to unstake their assets to stretch from under an hour to more than eight days.
Galaxy believes this wasn't just because of Ethereum's recent price rally or changes from the latest 'Pectra' upgrade — it was largely triggered by a sharp rise in ETH borrow rates, which made popular yield strategies suddenly unprofitable.To make sense of this, it helps to understand a few basics. Ethereum uses a system called proof-of-stake, where users known as validators lock up ETH in order to help run the network and earn rewards. This process is called staking. When they want to pull their ETH out — known as unstaking — they enter an exit queue. A validator can only exit once it's approved by the network, which ensures stability. But when everyone rushes to exit at the same time, that queue gets long — just like a crowded bank withdrawal line.
What Galaxy found is that a rise in ETH borrowing costs pushed investors to unwind 'looping' strategies (like staking, borrowing ETH against it, and staking again), which made many of them quickly pull out — creating a bottleneck and putting stress on liquid staking tokens like Lido's stETH and others, which are supposed to stay pegged to ETH but briefly slipped below value during the chaos.
Wood has a different theory
'Robinhood offering a 2% match for crypto transfers, and VCs and other investors shifting staked ETH into Treasury companies (DATs) to double their money when lockups expire.' She then added, 'As with $MSTR $BMNR, Treasury stocks are a way wirehouse advisors can give clients exposure to BTC and ETH.'
Wood's statement comes just days after Ark Invest sold over 30,000 shares of Coinbase worth approximately $12 million, along with more than 11,000 shares of Robinhood, valued at around $1.1 million. The firm also sold shares of Jack Dorsey's Block and its own Bitcoin ETF, ARKB. But what stood out most was Ark's fresh $116 million allocation into BitMine Immersion Technologies — an Ethereum-focused treasury company backed by Peter Thiel.
Bitcoin is the best-performing major asset this year, up 78.8% so far — far outpacing silver, gold, and tech stocks. It recently surged past an all-time high of $122,000, cementing its lead. In comparison, silver is up around 29.9%, while the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 lag behind.Understanding the '2% match'
Robinhood launched a crypto deposit match program, offering users a 1% bonus on net crypto transfers. If community deposits exceed $500 million, the match increases to 2%. The offer was valid until July 7, subject to terms and conditions.
At the same time, treasury companies like BitMine — which specialize in holding large amounts of ETH — are becoming increasingly popular with VCs and institutional investors. These firms operate similarly to how MicroStrategy stock has become a proxy for Bitcoin exposure. With Ethereum's rising relevance in DeFi, many view these treasury stocks as a bridge between crypto infrastructure and traditional equity markets.
Ethereum as a corporate treasury asset
According to a Yahoo Finance report, BitMine now holds more than $1 billion in ETH, making it one of the largest public holders of Ethereum. The firm's strategy mirrors the original Bitcoin-treasury play pioneered by companies like MicroStrategy.
ETH has climbed over 50% in the past month, and although it remains below its 2021 all-time high of $4,600.
Cathie Wood reveals strategy to outsmart Wall Street first appeared on TheStreet on Jul 26, 2025
This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jul 26, 2025, where it first appeared.
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