BlackRock’s IBIT Owned by Harvard, Abu Dhabi, And Now Texas

The State of Texas has reportedly bought $5 million worth of shares in BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF: IBIT. The purchase is part of the state’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, a treasury strategy that was enacted into law in June by Governor Greg Abbott. 

Texas joins other institutional holders such as Abu Dhabi and Harvard University as holders of the ETF. Texas also owns shares in SPY – an S&P 500 ETF with a market cap of over $670 billion – and an income-focused ETF from global asset manager Janus Henderson. 

Lee Bratcher, the Texas Blockchain Council president, stated that the purchase was made on the 20th November at an approximate $87k price basis. Bratcher also claimed that Texas would eventually self-custody its Bitcoin. 

It is one of the first purchases of Bitcoin (although it is via an ETF) by a U.S. state although the Wisconsin Investment Board and State of Michigan Retirement System also held IBIT at some point but have since sold their shares. The State of Michigan Retirement System still holds around $8.7 million worth of shares in ARKB - The Ark 21Shares Bitcoin ETF.

Texas joins Harvard and Abu Dhabi as other notable and interesting holders of IBIT. Harvard holds around 6.8 million IBIT shares, worth around $340 million at the time of writing. 

Abu Dhabi maintains exposure to Bitcoin through two state-controlled vehicles, Mubadala and Al Warda, which collectively hold roughly 16.6 million shares of IBIT—a position valued at around $834 million. It is important to distinguish this ETF exposure from the UAE's other BTC holdings. Arkham was recently the first to identify a separate on-chain stack of approximately 6,500 BTC, which is held directly by a state-owned mining company rather than through these investment funds.

For a deep dive into how crypto ETFs work, read our guide here. 

As these investments are off-chain, it is harder to track the movements of big institutional players. The SEC’s website is the ultimate source of truth with 13F filings from Harvard revealing all their holdings.

IBIT is increasingly becoming an institutional proxy for Bitcoin with JPMorgan recently announcing a derivative-style investment based on IBIT. The instrument allows investors to bet on Bitcoin’s volatility, but with some added protections typical of the TradFi space.