Harvard Leads Academic Institutions in Bitcoin ETF Accumulation

• Harvest University increased its BlackRock IBIT shares to over 6.8 million in Q3, despite BTC declining prices.
• Emory University also increased its Grayscale’s Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF and IBIT holdings, highlighting surging institutional BTC adoption.

Harvard University has dramatically increased its exposure to Bitcoin through spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the third quarter (Q3) of 2025.

New filings revealed Harvard, the institution with the world’s largest academic endowment, has nearly tripled the size of its spot Bitcoin ETF holdings.

Harvard Grows Triples IBIT Holdings in Q3

Harvard increased its holdings of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) to 6,813,612 shares in Q3. This marks a 257% increase from the 1,906,000 shares the University previously reported holding as of June. 

According to the filings submitted with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), those shares were worth $442.8 million. Unfortunately, the same shares are now worth around $364.4 million because the Bitcoin price has dropped since then.

This single Bitcoin ETF holding is now Harvard’s most significant publicly disclosed investment. It is bigger than its stakes in Microsoft, Amazon, or even the SPDR Gold Trust.

However, the filings do not show how much Harvard spent to acquire the shares between the two reported dates. Harvard currently has an endowment of roughly $57 billion, so even $364 to $442 million is less than 1% of the total.

Although this is still a tiny slice, it is symbolically huge because Harvard is historically very conservative with its money. 

Bloomberg Senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas commented on X, saying it is difficult to get an endowment to bite on an ETF, especially one at Harvard or Yale. Thus, he noted that Harvard’s IBIT shares boost is as good a validation as an ETF can get. 

IBIT from BlackRock is currently the market’s leading spot Bitcoin ETF by assets under management (AUM). Launched in January 2024, the ETFs have made it easy and safe for traditional institutions to get Bitcoin exposure without directly holding the coins. Harvard is using that vehicle aggressively.

However, IBIT has seen about $532.4 million worth of net outflows over the past week, per SoSoValue data. 

Emory University Increases Bitcoin ETF Holdings

A recent filing to the U.S. SEC also showed Emory University, a private research institution located in Atlanta, added to its Bitcoin ETF holdings. 

As of September 30, Emory holds over one million shares of Grayscale’s Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF (BTC). Notably, the University had increased its BTC holdings by 91%, from 535,781 by June end.

In addition to BTC, Emory also holds 4,450 shares of IBIT, which has remained unchanged since the last filing. In total, the holdings are worth $42.9 million.  

Emory became the first U.S. University to disclose spot Bitcoin ETF holdings. Emory Associate Professor of accounting Matthew Lyle commented, “There are some risks with doing it yourself,” when the university first disclosed its over $15 million BTC ETF purchase. 

Other universities that have adopted Bitcoin include Yale, MIT, and the University of Austin (UATX). 

Institutional adoption of Bitcoin is accelerating, a massive vote of confidence that could fuel increased prices for the leading coin. As we covered in our latest report, Bitcoin drops back to $94,000 as $1 billion in BTC floods exchanges.