Table of contentsHarvard snapping up Bitcoin and gold ETF sharesBitcoin ETFs hit sell-off hurdle
The Ivy League has given Bitcoin ETFs another seal of approval, with Harvard University bolstering the size of its holdings by almost 260%.
That’s according to disclosures in a Harvard Management Company filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Harvard Management Company, launched in 1974, manages Harvard University’s endowment and other financial assets, making stock market investments on the university’s behalf.
The filing shows that, as of its latest filing, the company’s holdings in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) were worth $442.8 million.
Harvard snapping up Bitcoin and gold ETF shares
As of September 30, Harvard University owned 6.81 million IBIT shares.
The university’s financial managers made their first IBIT investment in the second quarter of FY2025, taking up a $116.7 million position in the BlackRock-run Bitcoin ETF.
In August, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst noted that “endowments are the hardest institution to hook,” as “they rarely bite on ETFs.”
This trend appears to have been turned on its head. The dollar value of Harvard’s BTC ETF investment dwarfs the combined total of its holdings in the blue-chip tech stocks Meta, NVIDIA, and the Google operator Alphabet.
The filing also shows that IBIT is Harvard’s biggest ETF purchase, and its largest single investment in terms of dollar worth.
And Harvard is not the only member of the Ivy League buying up Bitcoin ETF shares. SEC data shows that Brown University owns 212,500 IBIT shares, worth $13,007,125 when it filed with the SEC on August 8.
The Harvard filing, meanwhile, also shows that the university’s fund managers are turning to gold. They have snapped up 661,391 shares in the gold ETF SPDR Gold Shares (GLD).
Harvard’s holdings in gold shares are worth $235 million.
Bitcoin ETFs hit sell-off hurdle
The rest of Harvard’s portfolio is primarily made up of tech stocks. The university holds significant positions in firms like Microsoft, as well as the chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor and Broadcom.
It also holds stocks in the gambling giants Light & Wonder and Flutter Entertainment.
Pension funds across the United States have begun buying Bitcoin ETF shares in recent years. But sell-offs have also become increasingly common.
Earlier this year, Wisconsin’s Investment Board sold the entirety of its $300 million holdings in the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF.
This month has also seen some investors liquidate their holdings. On November 8, the CryptoQuant analyst Maartunn noted that Bitcoin ETF flows have “dropped by about $2.3 billion from their peak.”
This marks the “largest outflow since May 2025,” he added. May saw investors withdraw a total of $4.8 billion from Bitcoin ETFs.
