Brown University Endowment Adds Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Funds to Its Holdings, Investing $4.9M

Brown University's endowment has added bitcoin exchange-traded funds to its holdings, investing $4.9 million last quarter.

The university endowment purchased 105,000 shares of BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust exchange-traded fund, according to a Form 13F filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The allocation to the ETF is a small percentage of the endowment's $7.2 billion in assets—less than 0.07%.

These ETFs, which provide exposure to cryptocurrency, have found their way into a handful of allocator portfolios, including the State of Wisconsin Investment Board and the state of Michigan Retirement System.

A 2024 paper from BlackRock found that a 1% to 2% allocation adds roughly the same portfolio risk as exposure to the average Magnificent Seven large-cap tech stock. But as exposure to bitcoin in a portfolio grows, its share of portfolio risk increases significantly. For example, a 4% allocation to bitcoin would account for 14% of portfolio risk, while a 1% to 2% allocation would account for around 2% to 5% of portfolio risk. According to BlackRock.

Brown's endowment returned 11.3% in fiscal 2024, second among Ivy League endowments to Columbia University's 11.5% return.

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