Harvard Holds $101M Bitcoin ETF Position, Halts Two-Quarter Selloff

Harvard University's endowment manager disclosed a $101.4 million position in BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF at the end of the second quarter, holding steady after two quarters of aggressive reductions.

Harvard Management Company reported 3,044,612 shares of the iShares Bitcoin Trust, or IBIT, as of June 30, according to its latest Form 13F filing. The share count was unchanged from March 31. The dollar value fell by roughly $15.6 million during the quarter as Bitcoin and IBIT declined.

The pause follows a sharp retreat. Harvard held 6.81 million IBIT shares at the end of September 2025 before cutting the position by 21% in Q4 and another 43% during the first quarter of 2026. At its peak, the position was worth $442.9 million and represented Harvard's largest publicly disclosed U.S. security.

Harvard first built a significant Bitcoin ETF position in Q2 2025, starting with roughly 1.9 million shares worth $116.7 million. The endowment more than tripled that by September. The expansion reversed as crypto markets weakened. By December, Harvard had cut to 5.35 million shares worth $265.8 million. The Q1 reduction brought the position to 3.04 million shares.

Harvard also exited its 3.87-million-share position in BlackRock's iShares Ethereum Trust during Q1. The latest filing shows no further selling of either ETF in Q2.

At $101.4 million, Harvard's remaining IBIT position represents less than 0.2% of its $56.9 billion endowment as of fiscal 2025 year-end.

Other large institutional holders also held steady. Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Investment Company kept its 14.72 million IBIT shares unchanged, worth roughly $490.1 million at quarter-end. The Abu Dhabi Investment Council held 8.22 million shares worth $273.6 million. Together the two sovereign investors retained about $764 million of IBIT despite losing roughly $118 million in market value during the quarter.

Some institutions moved the other way. JPMorgan increased its reported IBIT position from about 8.3 million to 10.4 million shares. Morgan Stanley reduced its position by 4.5% to around 16.5 million shares. Tudor Investment Corporation added 109,446 shares, bringing its total to 688,529 IBIT shares worth $22.9 million.

Harvard's disclosure does not represent a new $101 million Bitcoin purchase. It shows that one of the world's largest university endowments stopped reducing an existing position after cutting its IBIT share count by more than half from the September peak. After two quarters of selling, it held its remaining 3.04 million shares through another quarter of Bitcoin declines.