Original Author: Nicky, Foresight News
On August 16, according to a report by The Block, the latest 13F filing submitted by the Harvard University endowment fund shows that its holdings in the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) remained unchanged by the end of the second quarter, ending a streak of reductions over the previous two consecutive quarters. The fund had reduced its holdings by 21% in the fourth quarter of last year and by another 43% in the first quarter of this year. As of June 30, Harvard Management Company held 3,044,612 shares of IBIT, valued at approximately $101.4 million.
Based on the value of disclosed holdings, IBIT ranks 11th among Harvard's 19 reported positions, accounting for 2.4% of its $4.26 billion investment portfolio value. Due to the drop in IBIT's price in the second quarter, the value of this holding decreased by about $15.6 million compared to three months prior, but the number of shares remained unchanged. It is noteworthy that Harvard's holdings in gold-related products have now surpassed its Bitcoin fund, with its combined holdings of the iShares Gold Trust and the SPDR Gold Trust valued at approximately $171.2 million.
The Harvard University endowment fund, which manages the institution's roughly $57 billion endowment, first publicly disclosed its Bitcoin ETF holdings in the second quarter of 2025, with a size of about 1.9 million shares valued at approximately $117 million. By the third quarter, it had substantially increased its position to about 6.81 million shares, with the value reaching around $443 million at one point, making the Bitcoin ETF its largest single publicly disclosed holding. At that time, Bitcoin was approaching its all-time high, and Harvard's chase-higher move was widely interpreted as a continuation of its inflation-hedging trades. However, as prices retreated, Harvard reduced its holdings by 21% in the fourth quarter and by another 43% in the first quarter of 2026, also liquidating its Ethereum ETF holdings worth about $86.8 million. Its publicly disclosed crypto exposure rapidly shrank to around $117 million. The consecutive reductions and liquidations conveyed a clear attitude of risk contraction. By the second quarter of 2026, this contraction has hit the pause button.
This series of changes cannot be separated from Harvard's own financial situation. In fiscal year 2025, Harvard reported an operating loss of approximately $113 million, faced widespread suspensions in federal research grants, and saw its endowment tax rate increase from 1.4% to 8%, adding an estimated annual tax cost of around $300 million. With private equity and hedge funds constituting a high proportion of the endowment and having long lock-up periods, publicly traded ETFs, which have the lowest realization costs and strongest liquidity, naturally became the pressure relief valve. The current slowdown in selling pressure suggests the possibility of a phased alleviation of financial pressures and also reflects that the cost-benefit of further selling has diminished after prices have been halved.
Other U.S. university funds exhibited more consistent behavior in the second quarter, almost universally choosing to maintain their positions rather than sell. Dartmouth College's holdings in iShares Bitcoin Trust, Grayscale Ethereum Staking ETF, and Bitwise Solana Staking ETF all remained unchanged in share count, with the total value decreasing from $14.6 million in the first quarter to $12.4 million, a drop entirely attributable to price factors. Brown University held approximately 213,000 shares of IBIT, valued at about $7.1 million, also without any transactions. The University of Illinois Foundation held a small amount of IBIT, with a size of about $640,000. A common characteristic among these institutions is their relatively small portfolio percentages, making them far less sensitive to price volatility than Harvard, and thus not forming concentrated selling pressure during the decline.
If the inaction of U.S. university funds represents the patience of long-term capital, then the operations of other institutional investors in the second quarter showed more pronounced divergence. The Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala held 14,721,917 shares of IBIT, valued at approximately $490.1 million, unchanged from the end of the first quarter. This position ranked second in its 13F portfolio. The Abu Dhabi Investment Council held 8,218,712 shares of IBIT, valued at approximately $273.6 million, also unchanged. These two Middle Eastern sovereign funds collectively held about $764 million worth of IBIT, a decrease of about $118 million from the end of the first quarter entirely due to price depreciation. In contrast, Morgan Stanley reduced its IBIT holdings by about 4.5%, while JPMorgan Chase increased its IBIT holdings from 8.3 million shares to approximately 10.4 million shares and expanded its holdings in the BlackRock Ethereum ETF by more than fourfold.
The timing of Harvard's cessation of selling coincides with a period of tentative stabilization in the Bitcoin market. After hitting a low of $57,800 on July 1, Bitcoin has fluctuated within a range of $62,000 to $66,000 for nearly a month, neither setting a new low nor achieving a breakout rally. While this sideways trend does not constitute a definitive bottom signal, compared to the persistent downtrend in the first half of the year, it already shows signs of marginal weakening in selling pressure. For institutions holding IBIT, the urgency to continue significant reductions has clearly diminished within this range of converging volatility and stabilizing trading volume.
13F filings only disclose an institution's directly held US-listed securities and long options, excluding private funds, direct token holdings, or market-making inventories. The vast majority of Harvard's roughly $57 billion endowment is in private markets, with the publicly disclosed portfolio representing only about $4.26 billion. However, the signaling value of institutional behavior sometimes lies not in the size of the position but in the timing and direction of action. The fact that the active sellers from the past two quarters have stopped selling, while other university funds and Middle Eastern sovereign funds have shown no new selling pressure, and Bitcoin has been range-bound at relatively low levels for over a month, suggests that within the $62,000 to $66,000 range, this batch of institutional buyers who previously actively allocated to Bitcoin ETFs has temporarily chosen not to continue exiting.
