Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest added a combined 109,129 shares of Circle Internet Group (NYSE: CRCL) across three of its actively managed exchange-traded funds on Friday, July 31, 2026, one day after the stablecoin issuer secured a limited purpose trust charter from the New York Department of Financial Services.
The firm also expanded its exposure to Solana through the 3iQ Solana Staking ETF (SOLQ.U), reinforcing a portfolio tilt toward regulated digital asset infrastructure.
According to the firm’s daily trade notification, the ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) led the buying with 77,103 CRCL shares, representing roughly 0.0833% of the fund. The ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW) added 22,238 shares, representing 0.0842% of the fund, while the ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF) picked up 9,788 shares, representing 0.0839% of its portfolio. Priced against Circle’s Friday close of $62.61, the combined ticket printed near $6.83 million.
The Solana leg was smaller in size but strategically pointed. ARKW added 6,772 units of SOLQ.U, and ARKF picked up 5,012, bringing the fund family’s incremental Solana exposure to 11,784 shares, worth roughly $71,528. It marked the third tranche of SOLQ.U buying in under a week, following a $30,000 purchase on July 27 that The Crypto Times flagged alongside a $14.3 million SpaceX buy.
Circle’s Regulatory Sweep Sets the Stage
The buying followed one of the cleanest catalysts CRCL has printed since its June 2025 IPO. On July 31, NYDFS granted a limited purpose trust charter to Circle Internet Trust Company LLC, doing business as Circle New York Trust. The state authorisation stacks on top of the OCC national trust bank approval Circle received on July 10, giving the USDC issuer both federal fiduciary custody powers and state-level virtual currency banking authority.
The dual charter structure creates a compliance stack that rival Tether currently cannot match and slots Circle inside the operational perimeter of the GENIUS Act framework. Circle was the first company to receive a BitLicense from NYDFS back in 2015, and the trust charter extends an 11-year regulatory relationship.
CEO Jeremy Allaire called the New York charter a “longstanding objective” for the firm, adding that it places USDC “within a strong, respected framework as digital dollars become central to the global financial system.”
Despite the twin regulatory wins, the market shrugged. CRCL closed the session down 2.54% at $62.61 on Friday and slid further into the new week, printing $61.59 on August 2 with a market capitalization of roughly $16.5 billion. Wood added risk into that weakness.
Circle Stock, Analyst Targets, and the Q2 Print
The Circle buy sits inside a punishing valuation reset. CRCL trades near its 52-week low of $49.90 and remains more than 67% below its 52-week high of $189.92. Mizuho’s Dan Dolev recently trimmed his price target to $45 from $50 and reiterated an Underperform rating, arguing that the Open USD consortium stablecoin, backed by Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock and BNY, could restructure Circle’s reserve income economics.
Bernstein’s Gautam Chhugani lowered his target to $140 from $190 while retaining a constructive stance. The Street consensus 12-month price target still sits at $112, implying more than 78% upside from current levels.
The tension is straightforward. Circle earns nearly all of its revenue from interest on the reserves backing USDC, and both a lower Fed funds path and a distribution-heavy competitor threaten that spread. Against that, USDC circulation grew 19% to $73.2 billion and recorded $1.2 trillion in June trading volumes, roughly twice Tether’s $573 billion. Transaction revenue also doubled from $23.8 million to $47.2 million quarterly, according to Circle’s prior filing.
Wood is buying that thesis at 16x EV/RLDC, well below the 30x multiple CRCL commanded in August 2025. The trade functionally reads as an accumulation call ahead of the Q2 2026 earnings print scheduled for August 5, where the Street expects revenue of roughly $713 million and EPS of $0.27.
The Solana ETF Adds Are the Quieter Signal
The SOLQ.U additions are the smaller number on the tape but the more interesting one underneath. ARK first invested in 3iQ’s Solana Staking ETF in April 2025, making ARKW and ARKF the first US-listed ETFs to gain exposure to Solana and its staking rewards. The Canadian-listed vehicle offers spot SOL exposure plus staking yield with a 0% management fee through April 2026, and it now sits on more than CAD 300 million in AUM.
For Wood, SOLQ.U functions as a placeholder. Every incremental buy tightens the firm’s Solana exposure while she waits for a US spot Solana ETF approval that would let ARK consolidate the position into a domestic wrapper. SOLQ.U has taken a beating year to date, down more than 37%, but Wood has been systematically averaging in on Solana weakness rather than trimming.
The Rotation Underneath the Headlines
Friday’s tape was more than a Circle and Solana story. ARKK and ARKW together bought 298,243 shares of CoreWeave (CRWV), an AI infrastructure buy worth roughly $22 million, with the ARKK ticket alone weighing 0.2601% of the fund and the ARKW ticket printing at 0.3945%. That was the single largest weight trade of the session.
The sell side told the mirror image story. ARK trimmed 66,940 Shopify (SHOP) shares across ARKK, ARKW and ARKF for roughly $8.19 million. ARKW also offloaded 25,506 shares of CrowdStrike (CRWD), its largest single sale by fund weight at 0.2965%, and 8,649 shares of Cloudflare (NET) worth about $2.45 million. ARKK cut Snowflake (SNOW) and 10x Genomics (TXG) for a combined $3.8 million and trimmed 96 shares of Figma (FIG). ARKQ picked up 7,500 shares of Pony AI (PONY) and 2,700 shares of Kodiak AI (KDK) while cutting Iridium Communications (IRDM) and Strata Critical Medical (SRTA). ARKX trimmed 17,447 shares of Komatsu (6301) worth $776,808 and also sold Strata Critical Medical.
The through line reads as a barbell. Wood is rotating out of mature SaaS names and legacy security infrastructure and reallocating into three verticals she believes are structurally underpriced: regulated stablecoin issuance, AI compute and yield-bearing crypto exposure.
What the Tape Really Says
The buying pattern on CRCL is escalating. ARK added more than 220,000 CRCL shares into July’s selloff and layered another 109,129 on top on Friday. Cumulative July additions cleared 330,000 shares, aggressive positioning ahead of an earnings report the Street has already de-risked to a $45 downside case.
The timing also sits inside a wider legislative vacuum. All seven federal agencies missed the July 18, 2026 statutory rulemaking deadline under the GENIUS Act, pushing the next backstop to January 18, 2027. In that interim window, state and federal charters like Circle’s function as de facto regulatory credentialing. Wood is buying the moat, not the multiple.
The Solana buys track ARK’s expectation that spot SOL ETFs are the next US crypto product cycle after Bitcoin and Ether. Sustained SOLQ.U accumulation is Wood queuing capacity for a domestic vehicle she cannot yet buy directly.
For context, ARK’s July 28 Tesla, SpaceX, and Nvidia purchases totaled roughly $40.2 million into a broader tech selloff. Friday’s trades continue that pattern of buying volatility in conviction names while trimming what has already worked.
The Q2 print on August 5 will decide whether Wood’s Circle thesis compounds or gets tested. Until then, ARK’s tape is the cleanest institutional read on where the regulated stablecoin trade sits after Circle’s regulatory sweep.
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