Bitcoin: The Harvard Endowment’s Largest Public Investment

According to a new SEC filing, the Harvard University endowment’s largest publicly-traded investment is now in the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), which is a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) operated by Blackrock. The filing indicates the endowment increased its holdings of IBIT from 1,906,000 shares to 6,813,612 shares since its previous such report.

At current prices, the value of those IBIT holdings sits at around $364 million. This is already down rather heavily from the roughly $443 million valuation included in the filing, as bitcoin’s price has recently been struggling and now appears stuck under the $100,000 mark. As pointed out by MacroScope on X, another notable, and perhaps related, aspect of this recent filing is the 99% increase in gold ETF SPDR Gold Shares as well.

Bitcoin is now Harvard’s largest reportable public investment. Larger than Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia and others. See link below for the list.

Of course Harvard’s total endowment is much larger and includes private investments that aren’t publicly reported. But yesterday’s BTC… https://t.co/OsV0XFAb6N

— MacroScope (@MacroScope17) November 15, 2025

In addition to their notable bitcoin and gold holdings, the Harvard University endowment also reported large investments in tech giants like Microsoft, Nvidia, and Alphabet (Google’s parent company).

Again, it should be noted that this SEC filing only covers the endowment’s holdings in the public markets. According to a recent report by Reuters, the total size of the Harvard University endowment sits at roughly $57 billion, with only 14% of that being held in public equities. That valuation would indicate the endowment’s holdings in IBIT represent less than 1% of its overall portfolio. However, it’s definitely possible that the endowment also has bitcoin exposure in some of its privately-held investments.

According to Forbes, Harvard has the largest endowment among all universities.
Growing Trust in Bitcoin as a Store of Value

Of course, Harvard is not going out on a limb on their own in terms of their bitcoin holdings. In terms of university endowments with bitcoin exposure, there have been reports pointing to fellow Ivy leaguers Brown and Yale, in addition to many others.

These endowment funds tend to be focused on long-term, fundamental value rather than short-term trades based around temporary hype. And interest in bitcoin from these sorts of funds focused on longer timeframes more generally has continued to develop over time. In addition to university endowments, various state pension funds everywhere from Michigan to Florida also have exposure to bitcoin via spot ETFs or bitcoin treasury company Strategy. Bitcoin exposure can also be found in the sovereign wealth funds of Abu Dhabi, Norway, and other nations.

🇺🇸 NEW: 14 US states have reported $632m in $MSTR exposure for Q1, in public retirement and treasury funds.

A collective increase of $302m in one quarter. The average increase in holding size was 44%. pic.twitter.com/0PKm1avcPR

— Julian Fahrer (@julianfahrer) May 15, 2025

Nation-states, Fortune 500 companies, central banks, and other large entities are also increasingly viewing bitcoin as a reserve asset in place of U.S. treasuries, gold, or other alternatives. Just this past week, the Czech National Bank announced its first bitcoin purchase for the purpose of evaluating the potential addition of the crypto asset to their international reserves, despite objections from European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde.

Of course, the establishment of a strategic bitcoin reserve was also a campaign promise made by now President Donald Trump, but such a reserve has yet to materialize.

While those more aligned with Bitcoin’s original cypherpunk ethos are becoming increasingly worried about the extremely prevalent use of third-party bitcoin custodians by the vast majority of these large institutions, this type of adoption does at least still enable the intended removal of trust in terms of the crypto asset’s underlying, unwavering monetary policy. However, there still seems to be plenty of work to be done when it comes to other cypherpunk values, such as the decentralization of payments and financial privacy, as illustrated by the crypto industry’s heavy embrace of stablecoins.