The cryptocurrency industry is growing, and it’s growing at an alarming rate.
Not only are institutional investors from Wall Street getting into crypto with the likes of institutional digital asset platforms like Bakkt and Fidelity coming to market, but Harvard University is making its move into crypto as well.
The Harvard University Endowment Fund made an unprecedented investment into blockchain startup Blockstack’s cryptocurrency tokens during its private token sale, which raised over $50 million from venture investment rounds.
Sharing insights on the Harvard University investment is Anthony Pompliano, co-founder at crypto venture fund Morgan Creek Digital, who claims Harvard’s endowment fund invested $5 to $10 million into the token sale:
BREAKING: Harvard’s endowment invested $5M – $10M directly into Blockstack’s token sale.
This means that one of the leading university endowments is comfortable holding tokens directly.
THE VIRUS IS SPREADING 🔥
— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) April 11, 2019
Blockstack: The First SEC-Qualified Token Offering of Its Kind
According to a preliminary circular offering statement submitted on April 11 to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Blockstack Token LLC is set to be the first SEC-qualified token offering of its kind, as it will be conducting a $50 million token offering using the SEC Regulation A+ framework once approved.
Apart from the public Blockstack token sale that’s waiting for approval, Blockstack is currently offering investment contracts with the issuance of 195 million securities at $0.30 per security.
Also detailed in the circular, a representative of Harvard Management has been listed as a member of the token advisory board along with two other representatives from Lux Capital and Foundation Capital.
The three representatives are partners of a QP fund that has purchased 95.8 million Stack tokens during the private sale of 723 million Stack tokens for $48 million last year.
Harvard Invests in Crypto Tokens, Will Other Universities Follow?
According to statistics from the National Center for Education, academic endowment funds for universities and colleges totaled $547 billion at the end of the 2015 fiscal year.
Out of this amount, $118 billion is attributed to the top 5 university endowments, and last year Harvard’s college endowment fund became the largest in the world, as it reached $39.2 billion.
Therefore, with such a substantial amount of money in college and university endowments, there is a lot of money that could potentially enter the crypto markets if endowment funds follow Harvard University’s lead.
Moreover, Yale has also been known to make investments into cryptocurrency funds. However, since Yale and other academic institutions are privately held entities, few details are known as to how much and where they invest their funds.
All in all, a new trend of academic endowment funds investing in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology may be underway. With this new inflow of capital to the markets along with institutional investors, the crypto industry may soon experience a bull run like never seen before.
Do you think we will see more and more university and college endowment funds invest in cryptocurrencies? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
