Brown University Bets on Bitcoin With Millions Worth of BlackRock ETF Shares

The Ivy League’s Brown College has thousands and thousands of {dollars}’ value of Bitcoin publicity by way of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Belief ETF (IBIT) ETF, in response to a brand new 13F-HR filing with the SEC. 

The holdings report filed on Friday reveals the college owned 105,000 shares of IBIT, valued round $4.9 million as of the primary quarter’s finish on March 31. The IBIT shares weren’t listed on the earlier quarter’s submitting.

The shares are at the moment valued at about $5.8 million. Whereas a big funding, the place is only a drop within the bucket for an endowment that elevated to greater than $7.2 billion on the finish of its 2024 fiscal yr.

“Over the previous few a long time, the monetary markets have considerably elevated in complexity, and because the worth of the endowment has grown, Brown has tailored,” its 2024 endowment report reads. “In the present day, a staff {of professional} traders pursues a various set of funding methods that require excessive ranges of experience and funding acumen.”

The college’s portfolio contains diversified holdings that include “investments in shares, bonds, personal corporations, actual property, and commodities.”

Brown will not be the primary college to hunt publicity to Bitcoin. 

In Might 2024, the College of Austin (UATX) collaborated with Bitcoin providers firm Unchained to create a $5 million Bitcoin endowment. 

Then in October, Atlanta’s Emory College reported nearly $16 million in Bitcoin publicity by way of the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Belief. Its most recently filed holdings report reveals a discount in shares, however round $22 million in Bitcoin publicity due to the asset’s worth rise. It additionally showcases greater than $1 million value of shares in main crypto trade, Coinbase.

The trio of universities match alongside a rising checklist of establishments—from publicly traded companies to world governments—which might be racing to achieve entry to crypto’s largest asset by market cap. 

The worth of Bitcoin neared $98,000 on Friday for the primary time since February, rebounding from a neighborhood low round $75,000 in early April. It is at the moment priced at $96,330.

Decrypt tried to contact Brown’s funding workplace for remark, however was unable to achieve a consultant earlier than the publication of this text.

Edited by Andrew Hayward