Harvard dumps entire ETH position after just one quarter

[Oshosondy]

Why are institutions making bad examples of themselves? Why not investigate before buying?

This is another one: South Korean Funeral Firms Face Insolvency Amid Crypto ETF Losses

But altcoins are more volatile and more disappointing. This is the what the news about Harvard dumping ethereum ETF is all about:

Harvard Management Company, the entity that manages Harvard University’s endowment fund, sold all of its Ether (ETH) holdings after just one quarter, according to its Q1 2026 United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.

The endowment no longer holds the $87 million in BlackRock iShares Ethereum Trust exchange-traded fund (ETF) shares, which it held in Q4 2025, according to its Q1 2026 SEC filing.

Harvard also reduced its exposure to Bitcoin (BTC) in Q1 2026, offloading about 2.3 million Bitcoin ETF shares. The endowment fund still holds more than 3 million shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, valued at nearly $117 million.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/harvard-dumps-entire-eth-position-one-quarter

Why not just wait? But I have more assurance that the price will get to all time high if it is bitcoin.

[Ambatman]

You are book smart doesn't translate to been money smart
Maybe they wanted a means for people to see their enthusiasm and grant donations.
Sadly they had to choose ethereum
Mr stable coin and imagine them choosing to sell in a loss.
I doubt one would treat their personal money like this
Going big without prior knowledge
This shows that they have always been in it for the short term gain.

[rat03gopoh]

Maybe they could hold it longer if there were no serious factors behind ETH, but I'm sure that Harvard-class institutions understand the internal situation of EF better than the average guy. However, I don't see any indication that they want to abandon their exposure to the crypto market completely, maybe they are looking at other prospects, who knows.

[TastyChillySauce00]

Those fund management company are just as bad as the average people in the market. Why are they buying ETH in the first place when they got Bitcoin and why are they buying when price is already so high. Altcoin is only good at the beginning when they were still at price discovery. Other than that Bitcoin should be the default option for an institution like Harvard.

They are buying at peak, incurred $150 million loss and decide to sell some. It reminds me of a newbie who buy because they thought the market gonna go up forever and suffer losses.

[Alpha Marine]

There could be many reasons why they did that; not everything is always so simple from the outside. But it could also be because they don't see anything promising in ETH, as many other investors are running out of patience with the coin.
The article said they also offloaded some of their bitcoin ETF holdings, but I guess they would get some profit out of that, depending on when they bought it.

Mr stable coin and imagine them choosing to sell in a loss.
I doubt one would treat their personal money like this
Going big without prior knowledge

ETH is one coin no one should ever buy when it's going up because it would be so difficult for it to get back to that position and give you a profit. If they bought it in the last quarter of last year, that would be around $2800 to $3k+, which is a huge loss considering what the price is now.
It doesn't make them bad at their jobs, though. Even the best in the financial market makes financial mistakes. You never know, maybe getting out was a wise choice instead of leaving it and letting it fall even more. In some things, you just have to cut your losses and move on to the next.

[PonzinomicsRWA]

I don't know the reason behind their initial investment into BTC but I will say that maybe they want to sell their BTC to get in on the Ai action. Computer hardware in stocks have been going up like crazy. Maybe these institution want to free up some money and get in on some of that money that is being pumped into it.

On an unrelated note there are 3 companies that want to IPO this year. SpaceX, Anthropic (Claude Ai), & OpenAi (ChatGPT). What would an investor do? Would they be more willing to sell their BTC holdings or buy more BTC during this period? Thats just my 2 cents. I'll be buying bitcoin, my gut feelings tells me that these 3 companies will be exit liquidity for private investors. Which will leave retail holding the bag. Maybe its the start of the Ai bubble burst.

[X-ray]

They realized that ETH is going nowhere and decided to dump it, even though people said it was unwise to not hold it after dumping this much, but I call it wise.

Hopefully they learned the lesson and invest in the real crypto called Bitcoin.

[stompix]

You are book smart doesn't translate to been money smart
Maybe they wanted a means for people to see their enthusiasm and grant donations.
Sadly they had to choose ethereum

Being forum smart doesn't make you smart either...
So, how about you read the second paragraph:

Harvard also reduced its exposure to Bitcoin (BTC) in Q1 2026, offloading about 2.3 million Bitcoin ETF shares. The endowment fund still holds more than 3 million shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, valued at nearly $117 million.

But still I find it funny how random on the internet are making fun on poeple adminsitring billions from a top university..
Out of pure curiosity, do you know where Harvard is on the map without googling it first?

[Marvelockg]

Why not just wait? But I have more assurance that the price will get to all time high if it is bitcoin.

That you're a well known institution doesn't mean that  you're automatically capable of holding your crypto through times of downs and this is where institutions backs up even when small scale investors are still all into bitcoin investment. At the end, your decision to continue holding or to back up is entirely up to you to make and you don't really owe anyone an explanation as to why you make certain decision. For an organised institution as Harvard, before investing, they certainly have thought about it real good and before making any sell, it's certain that it's on a ground of proper accessmeent on the neccesity of such decision.

[EluguHcman]

Why are institutions making bad examples of themselves? Why not investigate before buying?

Why throwing shades on organizations over their actions taken in the crypto market? How about the essence of diversifications of crypto investment which we discusses on regular basis here in the forum? Of course Ethereum is ideal to more experienced crypto investors and institutions as the next crypto asset to own after Bitcoin, so I don't think if there was too necessity to investigate before adopting the ETH as alternative.

Perhaps the decision of the ETH sell off at the very short time and eveb selling at lost seems ridiculous but let us just assume their action came from an the deep insights of how they exaggerate the market to react at a given time.
Moreover the fact they are institutions may not really mean they would have the best insights possibly to predict the crypto market except the institution is investing on the alt coins which developers is their affiliates.

But though, it feels unprofessional of institutions selling off their assets out of FOMO. However, the psychological acts seems happen when investing in random coins with very high volatility like that of the alt coins. So I should agree with you to an extend the institution did not do proper investigation before taking the decision of the sell off.

[crwth]

It's something new that I have read. I didn't know that Harvard tried to invest in ETH, and then they are like scared or backing out and accepting the loss. Maybe their management just thought that it might not be smart for them to do, or they weren't able to fulfill their goal, or they half-assed the investigation on what ETH is.
^{(They are probably waiting for the altcoin season that might not come soon  )}

Upon further checking, Harvard held the ETH ETF, not the spot, so maybe they have some rules regarding ETF holdings. Maybe it can be a procedure that they have to do and not about ETH itself.

[fullfitlarry]

Those fund management company are just as bad as the average people in the market. Why are they buying ETH in the first place when they got Bitcoin and why are they buying when price is already so high. Altcoin is only good at the beginning when they were still at price discovery. Other than that Bitcoin should be the default option for an institution like Harvard.

They are buying at peak, incurred $150 million loss and decide to sell some. It reminds me of a newbie who buy because they thought the market gonna go up forever and suffer losses.

I guess they can be categorized as newbies, or they could be amongst us as they've obviously failed to realized that buying at the top. But still though, it could be a big lessons for institutions or companies that are putting crypto in their balance sheet.

It's more than just doing that, they should have at least prepare for the worst so that in case that the price goes down hard, then they won't panic because they have anticipated it. But I guess they didn't that's why they could have been selling at a lost already.

[Danica22]

Harvard also reduced its exposure to Bitcoin (BTC) in Q1 2026, offloading about 2.3 million Bitcoin ETF shares. The endowment fund still holds more than 3 million shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, valued at nearly $117 million.

In fact, as of the third quarter of 2025, Harvard held nearly 7 million shares of IBIT. But as of now, they only hold just over 3 million IBIT shares. That means they have quietly sold off more than 43% of their bitcoin holdings in just 2 quarters, and there is no guarantee they will stop selling.

It seems they are looking to move away from crypto, not just ETH.

They realized that ETH is going nowhere and decided to dump it, even though people said it was unwise to not hold it after dumping this much, but I call it wise.

Hopefully they learned the lesson and invest in the real crypto called Bitcoin.

In another development, Cuban is said to have sold off around 80% of his Bitcoin. Do you think he was stupid to sell his bitcoin?

Mark Cuban's recent sale of 80% of his Bitcoin holdings raises questions about its safety compared to gold amid geopolitical crises.

https://www.valuethemarkets.com/cryptocurrency/news/mark-cubans-decision-to-sell-bitcoin-holdings-highlights-key-investment-insights

[Swordsoffreedom]

Those fund management company are just as bad as the average people in the market. Why are they buying ETH in the first place when they got Bitcoin and why are they buying when price is already so high. Altcoin is only good at the beginning when they were still at price discovery. Other than that Bitcoin should be the default option for an institution like Harvard.

They are buying at peak, incurred $150 million loss and decide to sell some. It reminds me of a newbie who buy because they thought the market gonna go up forever and suffer losses.

I guess they can be categorized as newbies, or they could be amongst us as they've obviously failed to realized that buying at the top. But still though, it could be a big lessons for institutions or companies that are putting crypto in their balance sheet.

It's more than just doing that, they should have at least prepare for the worst so that in case that the price goes down hard, then they won't panic because they have anticipated it. But I guess they didn't that's why they could have been selling at a lost already.

Did you know that Harvard is not only a prestigious university but also an investment management company called HMC? They manage asset worth over $57 billion, including private equity, hedge fund, real estate, and stocks. Of those assets, BTC or ETH accounted for less than 1%. You call them newbies and think they do not know what they are doing? LOL

It is ridiculous that many people here have not even taken the time to learn about Harvard, yet we are quick to judge them simply because they sold ETH or BTC at this time.



https://www.mexc.com/news/732313

[Zlantann]

I guess they can be categorized as newbies, or they could be amongst us as they've obviously failed to realized that buying at the top. But still though, it could be a big lessons for institutions or companies that are putting crypto in their balance sheet.

It's more than just doing that, they should have at least prepare for the worst so that in case that the price goes down hard, then they won't panic because they have anticipated it. But I guess they didn't that's why they could have been selling at a lost already.

Harvard newbies in the crypto industry? You shouldn't say that. Some prominent cryptographers were schooled in that reputable institution. They are aware of how the crypto industry function. Havard is too be to be threatened by FUD, this dump is intentional.

Maybe they decided to sell to fund a project or invest in another sector. The Trump administration froze about $2 billion in federal grant funding to the university, which might be affecting them adversely. The artificial intelligence industry is becoming more profitable. Maybe they want to invest on other more profitable area.

[KiaKia]

Maybe they are victim of a Eth perma bull called Tom Lee? I've never seen anyone as misleading as him, if you are new to crypto but Bitcoin isn't your side of interest you would fall for buying Ethereum just because of what Tom Lee said about Ethereum.

I hope this is not the case? Harvard should know better, or maybe they just believe that the price will still go lower and they can buy back ending up with higher numbers of Ethereum? It's now hard to know what happened.

Anyway, dumping doesn't mean they are moving on and away, never looking back, it can be another calculated risk where by they want to take advantage of the market.

[Somegory]

If I have any Ethereum left right now I would dump it all because the chart is very bearish, even some altcoins like Hyperliquid is holding stronger than Ethereum, I won't be surprised to see ETH at 1,800 again.

It's already too late for them, they could have done this when Ethereum was over 2500, what have they been looking at all this while? Expecting some magical recovery?

Things like this are better planned for the long term, they might wake up one day and still regret the decision they made today, Ethereum will still make a comeback some day.

[Majestic-milf]

Those fund management company are just as bad as the average people in the market. Why are they buying ETH in the first place when they got Bitcoin and why are they buying when price is already so high. Altcoin is only good at the beginning when they were still at price discovery. Other than that Bitcoin should be the default option for an institution like Harvard.

They are buying at peak, incurred $150 million loss and decide to sell some. It reminds me of a newbie who buy because they thought the market gonna go up forever and suffer losses.

I feel it was just a mild case of trying to imitate what others were doing, only, they chose to invest in altcoins instead. When you're not well advised financially, you'd make lots of mistakes which will rub off of you in a negative way. Most of these altcoins hold temporal appeal after there has been lots of hype but if you're not vigilant and smart, you'd be caught in the cross hairs when the hype loses its shine.

[Ambatman]

You are book smart doesn't translate to been money smart
Maybe they wanted a means for people to see their enthusiasm and grant donations.
Sadly they had to choose ethereum

Being forum smart doesn't make you smart either...
So, how about you read the second paragraph:

Oh I did
The fact that they sell just a few means they realised that it would have been better to just own Bitcoin
Than gambling on both.
What I'm saying is they chose ethereum when they could have taken less risk and focus on just Bitcoin
And if they want diversification there are options at there that ain't cryptocurrency.

[free-bit.co.in]

Maybe they decided to sell to fund a project or invest in another sector. The Trump administration froze about $2 billion in federal grant funding to the university, which might be affecting them adversely. The artificial intelligence industry is becoming more profitable. Maybe they want to invest on other more profitable area.

Large investor and fund typically diversify their assets across a wide range of asset classes. They adhere to risk management discipline and do not allin on a single asset class and expect to get rich quick like many retail investor.

Bitcoin or ETH is just one of their many strategies. Therefore, when things do not go as expected and better opportunities arise elsewhere, they will not hesitate to cut losses and reallocate capital to asset they believe will yield better return.

Therefore, selling of ETH or BTC does not necessarily mean they have lost confidence. They may be restructuring their portfolio, adhering to risk management discipline, and will reinvest when the time is right.