Harvard University Makes $5 – $10 Million Crypto Investment into Blockstack Security Token Sale

Blockstack is one of the latest companies to apply to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a token sale that they are hoping will bring in $50 million for their company.

It would end up leveraging the Regulation A+ crowdfunding exemption, and, as big of a deal as this would be for approval, the application is gaining some attention for the big names listed in it, like Harvard University.

The Ivy League research university is mentioned in the application for a remarkably interesting reason – using cryptocurrency. According to a post on Twitter from Morgan Creek Digital’s Anthony Pompliano, Harvard’s endowment chose to invest at least $5 million with the token sale involving Blockstack. With this in mind, Pompliano commented that “the virus is spreading.”

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

The filing specifies that Harvard Management Company ‘s designees of affiliates are Charlie Saravia, Zavain Dar, and Rodolfo Gonzalez. All three engaged in buying the 95,833.333 Stacks Tokens. The whole board includes four more members, but they did not invest.

Right now, it is not clear how much of the Stacks Tokens that the affiliates chose to invest in. Still, it looks like this circumstance is the first time that any major university has chosen to directly invest with a crypto token, using an endowment.

Over the years, many of the investors in the cryptocurrency space have been eager to see the entry of institutional investors to help boost crypto assets. Even when the value of Bitcoin reached $20,000 at the end of 2017, it still was not enough for these investors.

There was a lack of custodian solutions and regulated investment vehicles, which means that this entire group of investors missed the last bull run. With Bitcoin starting to rev up again, it would be best to have institutional investors on board.

At the beginning of last year, institutional started to get involved with Bitcoin and the rest of the market, including Grayscale. Even though there has been optimism in the space on the way that it could thrive, strategist Aris Paul of BlockTower said that he may have been overly optimistic about the potential for institutional capital.

CEO of Pantera Capital, Dan Morehead, said that the crypto industry already has the infrastructure to handle institutional investors, and he believes that “we now actually have the required conditions” to make it a reality.

Institutional investors need to have the security of a well-known custodian that falls under certain regulations, but Morehead explained that the industry has not really seen a “global name” that they can fall back on.

Realistically, most people see tokens as a riskier investment than major assets, based on their lack of longevity at that point. It is possible that Harvard became interested in the work of Blockstack because of the potential for the token to be the first of hopefully many to be registered directly with the SEC. In doing so, the token sale would end up happening in a regulated and transparent place.

After rounds of private comments, we’ve publicly filed for a $50M token offering with the SEC.

Upon qualification, our network and the Stacks tokens will be available to retail investors, including the US. https://t.co/OuPVbA4eJt

— Muneeb (@muneeb) April 11, 2019

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