- Ivy League universities have joined Institutional Investors in buying Bitcoins
- According to reports, Yale, Havard, and Brown universities began as early as 2019 to invest in Bitcoin
- A handful of these institutions have their Bitcoin funds held with Coinbase
As Bitcoin grows in popularity, we have seen large financial institutions and companies throw their weight behind the crypto industry.
2020 was essentially tagged the year when bitcoin went institutional. We saw the likes of Grayscale, Massmutual, Ruffer Investment, MicroStrategy, Fidelity Investments, Guggenheim Partners LLC, and a long list of others. This week also, Nasdaq listed Marathon Patent Group had just purchased $150 million worth of BTC,
According to a recent report, numerous universities in the United States, including some of its flagship institutes have been buying Cryptocurrencies for a while now. Among those mentioned were Yale and Harvard universities.
Yale, Harvard, and Brown Universities have Been Buying Bitcoin
The emerging report showed that multiple universities in the United States have been buying Bitcoins and other Cryptos with endowments. Harvard University, Yale University, Brown University, and the University of Michigan are some of the institutions that made the list.
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The report states that several Ivy League universities took an interest in blockchain technology via crypto-focused venture capital funds back in 2018.
Some began Investing as early as mid-2019 while others joined in over the last 12 months. Many of these institutions are said to hold their funds with the institutional crypto exchange, Coinbase.
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While Coinbase has, however, declined to comment on the report, perhaps, for privacy and legal reasons, there was a mention of university endowment in its 2020 reports. However, no names were mentioned.
On the Flipside
- Regardless of the mainstream interest in Cryptos, Paul Donovan, the chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, believes that cryptos will never replace real money.
- According to Donovan, the asset class is too volatile, rising, and slumping too quickly, to find a standard replacement for fiat money.
- This “fundamental flaw” according to him, is the reason why Cryptos will never be used as real money.
University Endowments are Backing Cryptos
The endowments of universities are controlled by specific legal structures with the intention of indefinitely perpetuating a pool of investments for a specific purpose. It is likely that they considered crypto assets as being a noteworthy Investment, due to the increasing global interest and also for being the best performing asset in recent times.
Harvard University has the largest endowment with over $40 billion in assets. Yale is just behind Harvard, with over $30 billion, Michigan has about $12.5 billion, and Brown holds $4.7 billion in assets. The source, however, did not state how much of these assets are held in cryptos.
Bahrain-based cryptocurrency exchange Rain has received regulatory approval from the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB). The exchange launched after raising $2.5 million in a seed funding round led by BitMEX Ventures and Blockwater, a Kuwait-based cryptocurrency fund.
