Key Takeaways
- Harvard sharply boosts bitcoin ETF holdings, making it its largest U.S. investment.
- The move is rare for a top university endowment and shows strong institutional backing.
- Harvard also increases gold ETF exposure, signaling a defensive strategy amid market volatility.
Harvard University has made a surprising and bold change in its investment strategy, sharply increasing its investment in bitcoin by buying a large amount of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT). This is unusual because Harvard is known for being very cautious with its investments.
Harvard’s newest filing with U.S. regulators shows that the university now owns 6.8 million shares of IBIT. These shares were worth around $443 million at the end of September.
Just a few months earlier, Harvard had only 1.9 million shares. This means the university increased its holdings by 257%, a huge jump in a short period of time.
This purchase makes IBIT Harvard’s largest publicly traded U.S. investment. It is now bigger than the school’s holdings in companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, or even its long-held gold ETF position.
Even though the IBIT stake is less than 1% of Harvard’s entire $55+ billion endowment, it makes up more than 20% of its publicly listed U.S. stocks.
Experts say Harvard’s decision is extremely rare for a top university endowment. Big schools like Harvard usually invest in private equity, venture capital, or real estate—not ETFs.
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said Harvard’s move is “as good a validation as an ETF can get.” He also explained that getting a major endowment to buy any ETF is difficult, let alone one tied to bitcoin.
Because of this large purchase, Harvard is now one of the top 20 biggest holders of the IBIT bitcoin fund.
Harvard made this investment during a rocky time for bitcoin. In recent weeks, bitcoin fell more than 5% and dropped below $100,000. Spot bitcoin ETFs also saw huge outflows, with almost $900 million leaving the funds in a single day.
Despite this, Harvard increased both its bitcoin and gold positions. The school nearly doubled its holdings in the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD) to 661,391 shares, worth $235 million. This suggests Harvard is trying to protect its portfolio with assets that may help during times of economic uncertainty.
Harvard’s decision stands out because some of its own past experts were very skeptical of Bitcoin. In 2018, Harvard professor and former IMF chief economist Kenneth Rogoff said bitcoin was more likely to drop to $100 than rise to $100,000.
“I think bitcoin will be worth a tiny fraction of what it is now if we’re headed out 10 years from now,” he said at the time. He also predicted governments would regulate it so heavily that it wouldn’t be useful.
Recently, Rogoff admitted he misjudged how Bitcoin would evolve. He said he was “far too optimistic about the U.S. coming to its senses about sensible cryptocurrency regulation” and underestimated the political incentives around digital assets.
