Key Points
-
Harvard’s endowment just sold all of its Ethereum and some of its Bitcoin holdings.
-
Those sales may or may not be linked to the institution’s bearishness about those coins.
-
There are still plenty of reasons to be bullish about both assets.
- 10 stocks we like better than Bitcoin ›
When one of the world’s wealthiest universities makes an apparently sudden and unexpected reshuffle of its crypto holdings, it tends to make a splash. On that note, Harvard’s endowment fully liquidated its $87 million Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) exchange-traded fund (ETF) position in the first quarter of this year, and slashed its stake in its Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) vehicle, the iShares Bitcoin Trust, (NASDAQ: IBIT) by 43%. The Ethereum holding only lasted a single quarter.
But before you start to second-guess your own Bitcoin or Ethereum positions based on this, it’s worth understanding whose playbook Harvard is running, so let’s dive in.
Will AI create the world’s first trillionaire? Our team just released a report on the one little-known company, called an “Indispensable Monopoly” providing the critical technology Nvidia and Intel both need. Continue »
Image source: Getty Images.
Endowments aren’t oracles
The most important dimension to pay attention to is that the timing of Harvard’s sales overlaps with a coming leadership transition.
N.P. Narvekar, who runs the endowment today and is the architect of its crypto foray, has reportedly told the board he plans to retire by late 2027. When the person who championed an aggressive strategy (for a conservative institution like an endowment) is headed for the door, it’s understandable for the portfolio to tilt back toward conventional assets.
Endowments also operate under all sorts of rules that individual investors don’t face. Harvard’s endowment funds roughly a third of the university’s $6.7 billion annual budget, so rebalancing can sometimes be driven by internal institutional mandates rather than long-term reasoning about the investments themselves.
In other words, Harvard’s sales aren’t a red flag for either Ethereum or Bitcoin.
What this means for your holdings
If you own Bitcoin or Ethereum in any form, including through Bitcoin ETFs and similar products, Harvard’s sales shouldn’t alter your thesis. An endowment rebalancing around a leadership change is not the same as the market discovering something negative about either asset.
Bitcoin’s fundamentals are unchanged. The iShares Bitcoin Trust has attracted more than $57 billion in cumulative net inflows since launching in January 2024. That infrastructure for enabling more demand for Bitcoin didn’t exist two years ago, and it’s working exactly as designed, drawing more capital to the coin over time.
Ethereum’s situation is more complicated. The coin is down more than 57% from its all-time high, and it’s arguably losing some ground to faster and cheaper competitors like Solana as well as to its own dysfunctions, like the recent spate of hacks of protocols on its network. But, it still dominates in the decentralized finance (DeFi) and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization spaces, the latter of which could constitute the future of crypto.
So if you believe in the present and future health of those segments, and you should, there’s still a bright future ahead for Ethereum. Don’t sell it, and don’t sell your Bitcoin either.
Should you buy stock in Bitcoin right now?
Before you buy stock in Bitcoin, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Bitcoin wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $477,813!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,320,088!*
Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 986% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 208% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors.
See the 10 stocks »
*Stock Advisor returns as of May 24, 2026.
Alex Carchidi has positions in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and iShares Bitcoin Trust. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and iShares Bitcoin Trust. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
