American Universities Increase Bitcoin Investments via ETFs
Date: 2025-08-12 Author: Gabriel Deangelo Categories: BUSINESS
Two prestigious American universities, Harvard and Brown, have published reports showing that their investment divisions have significantly increased the share of Bitcoin ETFs in their portfolios. Harvard Management Company announced in its quarterly report to the SEC the purchase of shares of the BlackRock spot fund (IBIT) for $116 million. At the end of July, about 1.9 million IBIT shares were under management, which is comparable in value, and in some cases exceeds the share of such assets as Nvidia ($104 million), Meta ($120 million), Amazon ($234 million) and Microsoft ($310 million).
According to the data, Harvard Management Company ranked 29th among 1,300 IBIT investors. Brown University also increased its position, bringing the number of IBIT shares to 212,500 worth about $13 million, more than doubling the figure from the end of March (105,000 shares).
Bloomberg stock analyst Eric Balchunas noted that, despite the impressive size for an ETF, such investments can be considered “microscopic” on the scale of Harvard. According to him, there is no information yet on whether universities use these assets for more complex transactions or arbitrage. The expert also emphasized that many American endowments are still wary of ETFs, preferring a strategy similar to the so-called Yale model.
On August 8, the US spot bitcoin ETF sector recorded its third consecutive day of inflows, receiving $403 million, of which almost $360 million came from IBIT. Net inflow for the week was $246 million.
Since the beginning of 2025, corporate treasuries and investment funds have purchased 371,111 BTC, which is 3.75 times more than the amount of bitcoin mined by miners during the same period. This data indicates growing institutional investor interest in digital assets, especially in products with a transparent structure and regulated operating mechanism, such as spot ETFs.
Thus, the presence of university funds in the Bitcoin ETF segment confirms that the cryptocurrency is increasingly entering the sphere of interest of traditional financial institutions. Even relatively small investments by such institutions have a symbolic impact, demonstrating that bitcoin is gradually becoming part of long-term investment strategies.
