Friday, May 15th, was the deadline for institutional investors and asset managers to disclose their investment holdings as of the end of 2026’s first quarter. One of the most interesting disclosures on the day came from Mubadala Investment Company, one of Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth vehicles.
Some traditional financial institutions also increased their crypto exposure while hedging their downside risk. For instance, the Royal Bank of Canada disclosed adding to its IBIT holdings while applying contingent options (calls and puts) to cover its positions.
The Bank of Nova Scotia, another Canadian institution, purchased 214,370 IBIT shares in the first quarter of the year. Meanwhile, Barclays revealed a layered position in the BlackRock Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, along with large put and call options (with the IBIT ETF as underlying).
After cutting its IBIT position by 21% in the fourth quarter of 2025, Harvard endowment further decreased its holdings of the IBIT ETF and completely liquidated its Ether ETF position. The university disclosed 3,044,612 IBIT shares as of March 31st (worth about $117 million), a 43% reduction from its 5.35 million-share position at the end of 2025.
Other Ivy League universities, Brown and Dartmouth, revealed no changes in their 212,500-share and 201,531-share holdings in BlackRock’s IBIT in the previous quarter. However, Dartmouth disclosed shifting its Ether exposure from the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust into Grayscale’s Ethereum Staking ETF, while opening a new 304,803-share position (valued at $3.67 million) in the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF.
Crypto Market Cap OverviewAs of this writing, the crypto market capitalization stands at around $2.57 trillion, reflecting an over 1% decline in the past day. While the market has somewhat recovered over the past two months, it is still down by more than 12% so far in 2026.
