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Harvard University augmented its stake in BlackRock’s Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) by more than 250% in the third quarter after the Ivy League institution initially invested in the fund earlier this year.
Harvard Management Company, the entity overseeing the university’s $57 billion endowment fund, disclosed in a regulatory document on Friday that it owned over 6.8 million shares in the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) valued at $442.8 million as of Sept. 30.
The institution revealed in August that it had a stake in IBIT for the first time, possessing approximately 1.9 million shares then valued at $116.6 million.
“Extremely rare” for a university to invest in ETF
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas stated on Friday that it is “extremely rare/challenging to persuade an endowment to engage with an ETF.”
“It’s as strong a endorsement as an ETF can achieve,” he commented, but pointed out that Harvard’s IBIT investment represented “a mere 1% of total endowment.”
IBIT was Harvard’s most substantial investment in its filing and marked its “largest position increase in Q3,” now placing it as the 16th-largest holder of the ETF, according to Balchunas.
Balchunas mentioned in August after Harvard’s initial IBIT acquisition that endowments “are significantly anti-ETF” and the “toughest institutions to engage” regarding ETFs.
Harvard expands gold, tech investments
The remaining investments from Harvard were chiefly in major US technology firms, such as Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Alphabet, Google’s parent organization.
Related: Crypto index ETFs will be the upcoming trend of adoption — WisdomTree executive
The university also acquired a new $16.8 million stake in the buy-now, pay-later fintech Klarna and $59.1 million worth of shares in the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
Harvard also nearly doubled its commitment to gold, increasing its share ownership in the gold-backed ETF, SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), to 661,391 shares valued at $235.1 million, up from its 333,000 share holdings in August.
SoSoValue indicates that Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs experienced net outflows of $1.11 billion in the trading week ending on Friday, as the price of Bitcoin dipped below $100,000.
Bitcoin is now trading under $95,000 after reaching a low of $93,029 in the past 24 hours, which temporarily erased the gains it had accumulated so far this year.
Magazine: Solana vs Ethereum ETFs, Facebook’s impact on Bitwise — Hunter Horsley
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