Harvard sold off its entire $87 million Ethereum stake just one quarter after buying it

The latest move by the endowment managers means that this is the third consecutive quarter that the value of Harvard’s crypto holdings has declined. The high water mark came in Q3 of 2025, when the university endowment reported $442 million in Bitcoin ETF holdings. That made Bitcoin the most valuable public equity Harvard held, but the university has since trimmed its Bitcoin holdings, and Bitcoin’s price has fallen. In its latest regulatory flings, Harvard’s endowment reported $117 million in shares of BlackRock’s IBIT Bitcoin ETF after selling 2.3 million shares since the prior quarter.

Harvard is in a league of its own when it comes to university investments owning crypto equities. The university is a significant institutional holder of Bitcoin, although its holdings are dwarfed by banks and sovereign wealth funds. Overall, Harvard is among the 25 largest holders of IBIT, according to data from Quiver Quantitative. 

Despite the Bitcoin market slumping in parts of 2026, ETF inflows have remained somewhat resilient, Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas told Fortune in an interview. 

“Most people seem to be giving this a couple years,” Balchunas said. “For Harvard, they own a bunch of other stocks, and stocks have done really well, so it might make it easier to absorb the losses in [Bitcoin], and sort of keep their position for a while hoping it comes back, which it did a little in the last month.”

The endowment was also the largest new buyer of BlackRock’s Ethereum ETF in Q4 of 2025, according to Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart. Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, and unlike the first and largest crypto in Bitcoin, its software can be used to host financial applications. The price of Ethereum is down 29% on the year so far, compared to just a 12% loss for Bitcoin. Bitcoin has greatly outperformed Ethereum over the past five years. 

Overall, Harvard holds shares in 16 different public equities, according to the filings. Its largest holding is $232 million in TSMC shares, followed by roughly $200 million in gold. Harvard’s public equities only account for a sliver of its $57 billion endowment, however. 

Harvard began buying IBIT shares in Q2 of 2025. But its crypto strategy may soon be without its initial architect. N.P. Narvekar, the head of Harvard’s endowment, has floated late 2027 as a retirement date in conversations with the board, the Wall Street Journal reported.