Last weekend, Harvard Management Company (hereinafter referred to as HMC) submitted its latest 13F holdings report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, its holdings of BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) shrank by another 43% compared to the previous quarter, while the Ethereum ETF (ETHA) purchased during the same period was completely liquidated.
In just two quarters, Harvard's publicly disclosed cryptocurrency holdings fell from a peak of $443 million to approximately $117 million. As one of the top institutions managing the world's largest university endowment fund, this move has sparked market questions: even top talent can't escape buying high and selling low?
In fact, Harvard's connection with cryptocurrency goes far beyond this. As early as 2018, several Ivy League endowment funds developed a strong interest in blockchain technology through venture capital funds focused on cryptocurrency. According to reports, universities including Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Michigan quietly began buying Bitcoin through exchanges like Coinbase around 2019.
Among them,HMC first publicly disclosed its holdings in Q2 2025. According to the 13F filing submitted in August that year, HMC held approximately 1.9 million shares of IBIT, valued at about $117 million, and simultaneously opened a position in the gold ETF (GLD), with holdings of about $102 million.
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan interpreted this set of moves as a "depreciation hedging trade," simultaneously betting on Bitcoin and gold to hedge against the risk of global monetary oversupply. IBIT thus became Harvard's fifth-largest publicly disclosed holding, exceeding its holdings of stock in Google parent company Alphabet.
Entering the third quarter, HMC substantially increased its position. As of September 30, 2025, IBIT holdings expanded to approximately 6.81 million shares, with a market value of about $443 million, a quarter-over-quarter increase of over 257%. IBIT surpassed Microsoft, Amazon, and Nvidia to become the largest single holding in HMC's publicly disclosed portfolio, accounting for about 20% of its public US stock portfolio.
At that time, faced with persistently low return expectations for traditional assets, several university endowment funds were quietly adjusting their investment strategies.
Columbia Investment Management Company CEO Kim Lew stated that expected returns and Alpha generation from traditional asset classes would be compressed, forcing institutions to move further out on the risk curve. W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Carlos Rangel bluntly said that if an 8% return couldn't be achieved, the traditional foundation model would be difficult to sustain.
Simultaneously, even Harvard's own economics professors could no longer sit still. In August 2025, former IMF chief economist and Harvard economics professor Kenneth Rogoff publicly reflected on his prediction error from 2018—he had predicted that Bitcoin was more likely to fall to $100 than to rise to $100,000 within a decade, yet the Bitcoin price had already exceeded $113,000, growing over 10-fold from that time.
Rogoff admitted he had been "overly optimistic about the U.S. establishing reasonable cryptocurrency regulation" and underestimated the demand support for Bitcoin in the global underground economy. The public mea culpa from this leading academic figure provided, to some extent, additional emotional endorsement for this wave of institutional buying. And Bitcoin subsequently approached its historical peak of $126,000 in October 2025.
In Q4 2025, the market peaked and began to decline, prompting HMC to adjust its portfolio. IBIT holdings were reduced by approximately 21%, down to about 5.35 million shares, with a market value of about $266 million. At the same time, BlackRock's spot Ethereum ETF (ETHA) appeared for the first time in the report, with holdings of about 3.87 million shares, valued at about $86.8 million.
According to Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart, hedge funds were net sellers of Ethereum ETFs this quarter due to the collapse of basis trade returns, making them the largest net sellers. Harvard precisely entered the market against the trend during this window, becoming the largest new buyer of Ethereum ETFs this quarter.
The latest Q1 2026 holdings disclosure shows that ETHA, which was just established less than a quarter ago, has been completely liquidated. Meanwhile, HMC once again significantly reduced its IBIT holdings, cutting them by about 43%, leaving approximately 3.04 million shares with a market value of about $117 million. IBIT has also fallen out of Harvard's top five holdings, surpassed in order by TSMC, Alphabet, Microsoft, and the SPDR Gold Trust.
According to estimates by well-known crypto KOL Chen Jian, HMC's average purchase price for IBIT was around $110,000, with an average selling price of about $80,000, resulting in a loss of approximately 28%, with paper losses on the Bitcoin portion exceeding $100 million. Regarding Ethereum, the average purchase price for ETHA was about $4,000, and it was liquidated at about $2,600, estimated to result in a single-quarter loss of over $30 million (-35%). Combined, this round of crypto operations allegedly resulted in losses exceeding $150 million.
Is this chasing highs and selling lows, or a routine rebalancing by an institution?
One view holds that HMC completed its largest scale-up of buying when Bitcoin was near its historical high, then sold more as the price fell, tracing a classic high-buy-low-sell curve. The Ethereum position was even entirely liquidated less than a quarter after purchase, almost perfectly capturing the entire decline. This is typical chasing highs and selling lows behavior.
Another perspective points out that by the end of Q3, IBIT already accounted for 20% of HMC's public portfolio, indicating an obviously excessive concentration. Subsequent reductions were a necessary action from a risk control perspective. Moreover, HMC still maintains an IBIT base position of about $117 million to this day, not having completely exited.
However, this round of reduction must also consider the current real-world pressure Harvard is under.
In October of last year, Harvard's financial report for fiscal year 2025 showed that, due to the Trump administration halting nearly all federal research grants in the spring, Harvard incurred an annual operating loss of $113 million on total revenue of $6.7 billion, marking the first budget deficit since the pandemic.This deficit accounted for 1.7% of total revenue, with the operating gap contrasting sharply with the $45 million surplus in 2024.
The endowment fund contributes about 37% of Harvard's operating income, providing approximately $2.5 billion in support during fiscal year 2025, but 80% of these funds are restricted by donor purpose and cannot be freely allocated.
Simultaneously, the Republican tax bill officially signed into law in July 2025 significantly increased the maximum tax rate on endowment funds from 1.4% to 8%, a change Harvard estimates will impose an additional annual tax burden of about $300 million.
Under this pressure, the asset structure itself determines where it's easiest to make cuts.
Harvard's endowment fund consists of approximately 41% private equity and 31% hedge funds. These assets have long lock-up periods and extremely high costs for discounted sales. IBIT and ETHA, as intraday tradable public market ETFs, have the strongest liquidity and the lowest liquidation costs, naturally making them the priority for adjustment.
Furthermore, HMC's current CEO N.P. Narvekar has indicated plans to retire around 2027 and is currently discussing succession arrangements with the board. In an environment of fiscal pressure, political uncertainty, and leadership transition occurring simultaneously, holding large, highly volatile crypto positions becomes an additional reputational risk.
In contrast to Harvard's retreat are the starkly different choices of other institutions. Among them, Abu Dhabi sovereign fund Mubadala continued to increase its IBIT holdings by about 16% in Q1 2026, raising its position to approximately $566 million, marking its fifth consecutive quarter of increasing its Bitcoin ETF stake.
Also as university endowment funds, Dartmouth maintained its IBIT holdings unchanged, swapped its Ethereum ETF for a staking version, and added about $3.67 million in the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF, becoming one of the first US university endowment funds to extend crypto allocations beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Brown University maintained its 212,500 IBIT shares unchanged, while Emory University exited its small IBIT position, instead increasing its holdings in the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust.
Overall, Harvard's operations in this round are the result of the combined effects of fiscal pressure, liquidity needs, and risk budget triggers, making it difficult to simply attribute them to chasing highs and selling lows.
When the world's top university endowment fund enters the crypto market, it does so not with a crypto-native belief approach, but with Wall Street risk-ledger logic. Crypto ETF products have indeed provided an institutional gateway, but when risk contracts, they also bring institution-style selling pressure.
