• Harvard University cut its BlackRock Bitcoin exchange-traded fund holdings by 43% in the first quarter, according to SEC filings released Friday.
• The university also sold its $86.8 million stake in BlackRock’s spot Ethereum ETF, which it had started one quarter earlier.
• Dartmouth College maintained its position in Bitcoin exchange-traded funds and expanded beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum exposure into Solana. 

Harvard University sharply reduced its cryptocurrency exchange-traded fund (ETF) exposure during the first quarter, even as several other US college endowments held or expanded their digital asset positions.

The Ivy League institution, which is home to the world’s largest university endowment standing at $57 billion, disclosed ownership of 3,044,612 shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT), valued at roughly $117 million as of March 31, released on Friday. 

The current position marked a 43% decline from the 5.35 million shares Harvard reported at the end of last year, after the university had already reduced the holding by 21% during the fourth quarter of 2025. Taken together, the two cuts show a multi-quarter unwind of what was, just six months earlier, the centerpiece of Harvard’s publicly disclosed portfolio.

Harvard also fully liquidated its $86.8 million position in BlackRock’s spot Ethereum (ETH) ETF, which it had only initiated in the previous quarter. The first quarter’s cuts mark a sharp reversal from the third quarter of 2025, when Harvard’s $443 million IBIT stake was the single largest disclosed holding in its portfolio, larger than its positions in Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), and Alphabet (GOOG), and ranked Harvard among the top 20 institutional holders of the fund at the time. 

IBIT is no longer among Harvard’s top holdings. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) now rank ahead of the Bitcoin ETF position within the university’s portfolio. IBIT’s price was trading down by 0.04% during the after-hours trading. On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment around IBIT remained in the ‘bearish’ zone, while chatter around it stayed at ‘normal’ levels during the past day.

Harvard’s pullback is, however, the exception rather than the rule among its Ivy League and peer institutions. While Harvard reduced exposure, several other university endowments kept their crypto allocations relatively stable or selectively expanded into newer products.

Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, reported holding 201,531 shares of IBIT valued at slightly over $8 million, unchanged from the previous quarter. The college also shifted its Ethereum (ETH) ETF exposure from the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust into Grayscale’s Ethereum Staking ETF (ETHE) while maintaining its 178,148-share allocation.

Additionally, Dartmouth disclosed a new position in the Bitwise Solana (SOL) Staking ETF, holding 304,803 shares currently worth nearly $3.4 million. The move marked one of the earliest examples of a university endowment expanding its crypto ETF exposure beyond Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum to include Solana-linked investment products.

Solana’s price was also up over 1% during the past 24 hours. The retail sentiment around SOL moved to ‘bearish’ from the ‘bullish’ zone, while chatter around it moved to ‘normal’ from ‘high’ levels over the past day.

Additionally, Brown University maintained its holding of 212,500 IBIT shares, while Emory University simplified its Bitcoin fund exposure by exiting its IBIT position and increasing its stake in the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust (GBTC).

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