Harvard's endowment kept its Bitcoin ETF holding unchanged through the second quarter of 2026, bringing a halt to two straight quarters of selling. As of the end of June, the university still held 3,044,612 shares of IBIT — BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF — worth USD 101.4 million.

Harvard Management Company runs the university's roughly USD 57 billion endowment — the largest of any US university — and ranks as an institutional asset manager with more than USD 100 million in equity. That classification requires quarterly disclosures of its holdings to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, covering US-listed stocks and options, with each report due within 45 days of a quarter's end — the reason second-quarter positions surface in mid-August. Such 13F filings capture only long positions on the reporting date; short sales do not appear.

IBIT, the iShares Bitcoin Trust from BlackRock, is the largest spot Bitcoin ETF on the market. Such funds have existed only since January 2024, when US regulators approved spot Bitcoin ETFs and gave institutions a listed wrapper for direct Bitcoin exposure. Harvard accumulated the position to a peak of 6.81 million shares by the end of September 2025 before trimming it down to 3.04 million shares across two steps. In parallel, the endowment opened a USD 86.8 million position in BlackRock's Ether ETF. The second-quarter filings arrived at the SEC in mid-August. They show no further reduction in IBIT — and a complete exit from the Ether position.

Harvard stops selling its Bitcoin ETF shares

The reported share count matches the end-of-March figure to the share, which means the endowment sold nothing over the quarter. Even so, the position's value slipped by USD 15.6 million, a change driven entirely by the decline in IBIT's price. A sale would have surfaced in the share count rather than in market value alone — the opposite of the two preceding reporting periods, when the drops came from actual disposals.

Harvard's original stake totaled 6,813,612 IBIT shares at the end of September 2025, then worth roughly USD 443 million. By the end of December, the holding had eased to 5,353,612 shares. The bigger cut came in the first quarter of 2026, when it fell to 3,044,612 shares — a 43 percent reduction. Taken together, the endowment shed 55 percent of its shares over two quarters, both of which followed Bitcoin's October 2025 high. The holding has now been unchanged for a full quarter for the first time since the September 2025 peak.

On Ethereum, the endowment moved in the opposite direction. Harvard had opened the BlackRock spot Ether ETF position just one quarter earlier, at USD 86.8 million — into a fund category that has existed only since US spot Ether ETFs began trading in July 2024. It no longer shows up in the new filing: the endowment closed it out entirely and did not open a replacement Ethereum position, leaving the Ether exposure at a single quarter's duration.

Bitcoin remains a minor position at Harvard

Within the disclosed portfolio, the Bitcoin ETF remains a small allocation. The fund places just 11th among 19 holdings and represents 2.4 percent of the USD 4.26 billion 13F portfolio. Gold carries considerably more weight: the iShares Gold Trust holds USD 149.5 million, and the SPDR Gold Trust a further USD 21.7 million — vehicles that have traded since the mid-2000s, when commodity ETFs first offered exchange-listed bullion exposure. Combined, the two gold vehicles amount to USD 171.2 million — roughly 70 percent more than the Bitcoin ETF stake.

The filing reflects only a slice of the endowment's assets, limited to directly held US-listed securities. Most of the roughly USD 57 billion sits instead in private funds that face no disclosure obligation. The 13F form therefore supports no conclusions about the university's overall crypto allocation.

The largest disclosed holding remains Space Exploration Technologies. Harvard owns 12,935,100 SpaceX shares valued at USD 2.21 billion — 52 percent of the entire 13F portfolio. The space company has traded on the Nasdaq since June and, in its registration, disclosed its own holdings of 18,712 BTC. That gives the endowment indirect exposure to additional Bitcoin that appears in no ETF line of its portfolio.

Institutional investors move in different directions

Other institutions acted more decisively during the second quarter. Morgan Stanley lowered its IBIT holding from 17.3 million to 16.5 million shares, a 4.5 percent decline in share count. The position's value fell far harder, sliding 17.3 percent to USD 548.6 million. The bank also owns 2.57 million shares of its own Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust, a fund that began trading in April and is worth USD 43.3 million. Its IBIT exposure remains comparatively large — more than five times Harvard's holding.

JPMorgan went the other way, lifting its stake from 8.3 million to 10.4 million IBIT shares. The bank also more than quadrupled its BlackRock Ether ETF holding, to roughly USD 14.3 million. Tudor Investment Corporation, the firm of Paul Tudor Jones, bought as well: after adding 109,446 shares over the quarter, it now reports 688,529 shares worth USD 22.9 million. The same filing lists IBIT put options with an underlying value of USD 23.8 million — a hedge that exceeds the direct share position — along with call options adding a further USD 4.93 million.

The Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds made no changes. Mubadala Investment Company held an unchanged 14,721,917 shares worth USD 490.1 million, its portfolio's second-largest position. The Abu Dhabi Investment Council likewise reported an unchanged 8,218,712 shares worth USD 273.6 million. Between them, the two hold roughly USD 764 million — about USD 118 million less than at the end of March, despite an identical share count. Earlier, Mubadala had added to its position in three of six quarters since its first disclosure at the end of 2024. Dartmouth College also left its three crypto ETF positions untouched; their combined value declined from USD 14.6 million to USD 12.4 million.

The number of IBIT holders grows despite the price decline

The price decline looms over the entire 13F season. Bitcoin trades near USD 63,000 in mid-August 2026, close to 30 percent below where it started the year. The price therefore sits at roughly half its October 2025 peak of more than USD 126,000. Even so, IBIT carried around USD 47.35 billion in net assets in mid-August.

Institutional participation keeps broadening. According to Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, IBIT's 13F holder list now spans roughly 1,500 institutions. Balchunas regards other holders as the more meaningful signal, pointing to Tudor Jones, the UAE sovereign wealth funds, Harvard, Dartmouth and the Texas pension fund. Purchases by large trading houses such as JPMorgan or Citadel carry little weight with him, because 13F filings do not separate proprietary holdings from client positions. At major banks and market makers, an IBIT line therefore reveals little about their own market expectations.

The season as a whole offers no uniform picture. Some houses are cutting while others build, and IBIT ultimately serves as a tactical bet or a long-term allocation, depending on the house. The next round of 13F filings, due by mid-November under the same 45-day deadline, will show whether Harvard's pause held through a second quarter and whether the Ether exit stuck.