Harvard increases holding of BlackRock Bitcoin ETF 3.6x to $443M

Harvard University increased its exposure to Bitcoin through BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) by 3.6 times in the third quarter, to nearly $443 million, making it a larger position than its holdings in Amazon and Microsoft.

His last deposit with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shows the world’s largest academic foundation held 6.8 million shares in BlackRock’s IBIT, up 257% from June’s 1.9 million, making the Bitcoin fund its largest U.S.-listed investment, up from fifth. The position now also exceeds its allocation to the SPDR Gold Trust.

The move is a striking demonstration of confidence in Bitcoin from the world’s largest academic foundation. Institutional investors like Harvard typically favor private equity, real estate and other alternative assets over ETFs, making the endowment’s growing exposure to BlackRock’s Bitcoin product particularly noteworthy.

“This is the best validation an ETF can get,” said Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas on “It is very rare/difficult to get an endowment for an ETF, especially a Harvard or Yale,”

I just checked and yeah $IBIT is now Harvard’s largest position in its 13F and its largest position increase in the third quarter. It’s very rare/difficult to get an endowment to bite into an ETF – especially at Harvard or Yale, it’s as good a validation as an ETF can be. That said, half a billion is a… pic.twitter.com/yw0tRcD1ad

– Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) November 15, 2025

This stake makes Harvard the 16th holder of BlackRock’s IBIT.

IBIT represents more than 20% of Harvard’s portfolio

The IBIT investment now represents just over 20% of the university’s U.S.-listed public holdings.

The filing does not specify how much the university endowment spent to acquire its IBIT holdings. However, the total value of its shares has fallen in recent months following a decline in IBIT’s share price.

IBIT share price (Source: Google Finance)

Over the past month, IBIT’s stock price has fallen more than 12%, according to data from Google Finance. It continued this downward trend over the past 24 hours, when it fell more than 3%.

This is a similar movement seen in the price of Bitcoin, tracked by IBIT, during the same period. Data from CoinMarketCap watch that the largest crypto by market cap has plunged more than 11% over the past month, but only a fraction of a percentage over the past 24 hours.

IBIT, one of the Bitcoin Spot ETFs in the United States on a 3-day outing streak

The Harvard filing shows the university is investing in Bitcoin, with the US Spot BTC ETFs now offering investors a traditional vehicle to gain exposure to crypto. Regarding its choice to only invest in IBIT even though there are other similar products in the market, this decision could be due to the fact that IBIT is the largest spot Bitcoin ETF in terms of cumulative inflows.

Since its launch last year, IBIT has accumulated $63.789 billion, Farside Investor data watch. That’s far more than the second-largest fund, Fidelity’s FBTC, with its $11.923 billion in cumulative inflows.

IBIT is, however, on a 3-day streak of consecutive entries amid a broader crypto market slowdown. Its biggest exits came on Friday, when investors withdrew $463.1 million from the fund. Other spot BTC ETFs are also on a 3-day outflow streak, namely Fidelity’s FBTC and Grayscale’s GBTC.

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