Harvard Endowment Exits Ether ETF, Trims Bitcoin Holdings

Harvard Management Company, which manages Harvard University’s endowment, recorded a full exit from the BlackRock iShares Ethereum Trust ETF in its Q1 2026 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing shows the endowment sold $87 million of Ether ETF shares it had listed in Q4 2025.

The filing also reports the fund sold roughly 2.3 million shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF in Q1. After those sales, Harvard still held more than 3 million Bitcoin ETF shares, valued at about $117 million in the filing.

The Q4 2025 disclosure listed the $87 million position in the Ether ETF; the Q1 2026 filing shows no holdings in that ETF. The Bitcoin reduction left a smaller stake in the iShares Bitcoin Trust compared with the prior quarter.

Ether’s market price declined more than 50% from a near-$5,000 peak in August 2025. The Ethereum Foundation reported eight staff departures in 2026, including researchers Julian Ma and Carl Beek and longtime researcher and former project manager Josh Stark.

In March, the Ethereum Foundation published a mandate listing priorities such as decentralization, privacy, open-source software and resistance to censorship. Journalist Laura Shin wrote that the mandate’s core principles are ‘great’ and ‘worth fighting for’ but urged the foundation to place more emphasis on tokenomics and support for Ether’s market value.

Harvard’s quarterly SEC filings disclose public ETF positions but do not include explanations for trades. The Q1 2026 filing documents a full exit from the BlackRock Ether ETF after a single quarter of holding and a reduction in Bitcoin ETF exposure.