PANews reported on May 17th that, according to The Block, sovereign wealth funds, universities, and banks have recently released their 13F holdings reports for the first quarter of 2026. Regarding sovereign wealth funds, Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala, increased its holdings in BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (ticker symbol IBIT), raising its stake from 12,702,323 shares to 14,721,917 shares, adding over $90 million to its holdings, bringing its total holdings to nearly $660 million. Mubadala's Abu Dhabi Investment Committee (ADIC) maintained its IBIT holdings at 8,218,712 shares, valued at $315.8 million.

Several university endowment funds reported that their cryptocurrency ETF holdings remained largely stable. Harvard University's endowment fund reported holding 3,044,612 shares of IBIT, worth approximately $117 million. This represents a 43% decrease from the 5.35 million shares of IBIT held at the end of 2025, after Harvard had already reduced its holdings by 21% in the fourth quarter. IBIT is no longer its largest holding (surpassed by TSMC, Alphabet, Microsoft, and SPDR Gold Trust). Harvard University also completely liquidated its $86.8 million BlackRock Ethereum Spot ETF holding, which it had established in the previous quarter.

Dartmouth College reported holding 201,531 shares of IBIT, worth slightly over $9 million, unchanged from the previous quarter. The college moved its Ethereum ETF holdings from the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust to Grayscale's Ethereum Staking ETF, maintaining its position of 178,148 shares. Dartmouth also disclosed a new holding in the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF, holding 304,803 shares, currently worth nearly $3.67 million. This marks the first time an institutional endowment fund has expressed interest in expanding its investments beyond cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Meanwhile, Brown University maintained its holding of 212,500 IBIT shares, while Emory University simplified its Bitcoin fund holdings from two to one. The university liquidated its 4,450 IBIT shares, while increasing its holdings in the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust from slightly over 1 million shares to 1,354,148 shares.

Traditional financial institutions are also actively rebalancing and hedging their positions. Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) increased its direct stake in IBIT and increased its use of put and call options for hedging. Scotiabank increased its IBIT holdings by 214,370 shares after liquidating its previous holdings of Trump-related U.S. Bitcoin stocks. Barclays also disclosed its IBIT position, including approximately 4.46 million physical shares and a significant number of put and call option positions related to the ETF. Hong Kong-based Laure reduced its IBIT holdings from 8,786,279 shares to 6,846,279 shares.

BlackRock: It is recommended to allocate 2% of the portfolio to Bitcoin

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