I usually post on Friday but I caught something on Twitter that I simply had to comment on.
On April 11, 2019, Twitter went wild with the report that Harvard bought between $5-10 million worth of tokens from Blockstack, a new decentralized applications platform. Anthony Pompliano broke the news:
BREAKING: Harvard’s endowment invested $5M – $10M directly into Blockstack’s token sale.
Source: Anthony Pompliano’s twitter feed
This means that one of the leading university endowments is comfortable holding tokens directly.
THE VIRUS IS SPREADING 🔥— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) April 11, 2019
Virus spreading?
I’m happy to hear Harvard feels comfortable speculating on Blockstack’s cryptocurrency and securing its own private keys. Harvard’s endowment speculates on many ventures and we should all be happy cryptocurrency is one of those ventures. It lends a strong air of credibility when established, reputable investors make small wagers on any new financial product, let alone one as contentious as cryptocurrency.
CCN provides great perspective on just what this means in a recent article.
But is the virus really spreading?
Harvard’s endowment is estimated at $38 billion. Ten million bucks is literally a rounding error–it’s .00000025 of the total endowment. If Harvard were a millionaire, it would have just bought $2.50 worth of bitcoin. If Harvard were your average American, it would’ve just plunked a dime into a crypto tip jar.
One small step for Harvard, one giant leap for Blockstack—what about us?
To summarize: a single college put a small amount of money into a speculative venture as part of a small investment into a small asset class. A new blockchain business got a big influx of cash and some free press.
What did you get?
But Mark, this means institutional investors are coming! We’ll all get rich!
I’m absolutely certain institutional investors are coming. They’re already here!
Yale, MIT, University of Michigan, Virginia’s Fairfax County pension fund, one of the Rockefeller family offices, and several other institutions have already publicly acknowledged they’ve bought a little cryptocurrency.
You can bet more will come.
Eventually.
For now, get hyped. Be happy! May we all have wonderful things to celebrate!
Virus? Bull run? FOMO? LAMBO? Mass adoption?
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
—
Mark Helfman is a cryptocurrency commentator and author of Consensusland, a novel about a country that runs on cryptocurrency.
Also published on Medium.
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